“When he had received the drink, Jesus said,‘It is finished.’”—Jesus on the cross in John 19:30 NIV

“It is true that I am greatly diminished.”
—Texas Ranger LaBoeuf to Mattie Ross after being accidentally shot by U.S. Deputy Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn in 2010 movie version of True Grit

In my last post, published on February 27, 2016, the birthday of my Female American Icon/Idol Elizabeth Taylor, I noted that I would have to wait a while before being able to publish a new post.

The reasons I cited for this delay were my declining physical health and failing eyesight. I had hoped that these serious personal health issues could be resolved in a few weeks and I could return to semi-regular blogging.

In fact, I had already begun planning a couple of timely new posts I would like to compose and publish. One of them was to be a tribute to my Male American Icon/Idol Elvis Presley. I had hoped to be able to publish it in August of this year to commemorate his death in August 1977, the year I moved my family to Tulsa from our hometown of McGehee, Arkansas.

Unfortunately, instead of my health and eyesight improving in the two and a half months since that last post at the end of February, both have continued to deteriorate rapidly and seemingly irreversibly.

A Few Important Events in My Life
That Took Place in the Month of May

“You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.”—Stanislaw J. Lec

“History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.”—Bruce Catton

Now in the month of May, I have been reminded of several important events in my life that have taken place in that month.

One of them was the death of my father at the McGehee Livestock Auction on May 25, 1954. I wrote about that life-changing event that occurred at my age of fifteen in an earlier post titled: “My Father’s Brand and Seal” published on July 6, 2011.

Another important May post was my graduation at age eighteen from McGehee High School in 1956. Ironically, the sixtieth anniversary class reunion was being organized at the very moment I was planning and composing this post—though I will not be able to attend that reunion celebration set for October 14-15, 2016—for the very reasons cited above. (For more about our graduation and our senior trip, see my earlier post titled: “Moments to Remember” published on May 23, 2012.)

A third May post was titled “My Story Begins” and was the launch of my blog exactly five years ago this month, on May 12, 2011. As of May 16, 2016, that blog has now reached 100,000 visits! When I launched it I had no idea of how many visits it might produce. If pressed, I might have estimated (or hoped for) about 10,000!

Lists of Blog Posts from
May 12, 2011 to May 25, 2016

“A great part of knowing where we’re heading is
remembering where we came from.”—Southwestern Bell ad

“Remember who you are.”—My mother’s last words to me
whenever I would leave home

Earlier in these five years of blogging, I decided that I needed to provide a list of the first 112 posts I had published to that time, along with their titles, dates of publication, and links to their location.

Now feeling that the list of blog posts needs to be updated and completed, despite my poor health and eyesight, here is a list of Posts #113 to #139 (with Post #140 being the post you are now reading.)

“There is a timefor everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die . . .,
a time to search and a time to give up . . .”
—Ecclesiastes 3:1-6 NIV

“Ihavefought a good fight,Ihavefinishedmycourse,Ihave kept the faith.”—St. Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7 KJV

In accordance with the title of this post, its opening quotations—“It is finished” and “I am greatly diminished”—and the introduction to the post, I conclude it with these quotations relating to the short time left to me on this earth, my rapidly failing health and eyesight, and the finishing of my work on this autobiographical blog.

That completed blog is represented by the reaching of my personal goal for it of 100,000 visits, along with a few other significant events of my life that have taken place in the month of May, especially over the five years of this blog.

I am sorry that I am simply no longer able to continue to publish posts on the blog. That “time to give up” has been increasingly clear (at least to me) by the increasing time, effort, and actual physical, mental, and emotional pain it has caused me to compose and publish each new post.

This fact should also be clear to you by examining the list of the first 112 posts I composed and published in comparison with the new list of final posts I have composed and published more recently. Those early posts appeared weekly (an amazing feat even to me!), while the latter group were published in an increasingly longer and irregular time frame—from two weeks up to two months or more, as with this final Post #140.

I do hope you will use these two lists of posts to search, locate, read, enjoy, and share them with others for as long as I am able to maintain the blog in operation.

Thank you for following the blog and commenting on it, whether it was for one isolated visit or for multiple regular visits over the past five years.

And my special thanks to three special people who have contributed so much to this blog:

Patsy McDermott Scavo (my McGehee High School classmate from the Class of 1956 which is now planning its sixtieth reunion), who contributed numberless anecdotes, stories, videos, links, etc., that now make up so much of the copy in this blog.

Joe Dempsey (my Ouachita Baptist College classmate of the Class of 1960), who contributed so many hours (often at the expense of his own work and blog) in designing this blog and in providing so much technical assistance to keep it going, even (especially) with this final post.

Marion Williams Peacock (my wife whom I call “Mari,” also a fellow graduate of McGehee High School and Ouachita Baptist College) who not only helped me to “keep this blog going” for the five years of its life, but even more importantly “kept me going” for the fifty-three years of our marriage.

Please continue to pray for me as I continue to deal with my health and vision problems and as I continue to pray for you and for all those who have joined me in this online autobiographical journey, a piecemeal glimpse into my recent personal past and into the faraway past spent in a bygone place that made me who I am.

Remember my personal philosophy on which my entire life and this entire blog are based: “Where you’re from is who you are!”

And with that warm goodbye, may “[t]heLordmake his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: [t]heLordlift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.” (Numbers 6:25-26 KJV)

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams . . .”
—“Endymion,” a poem written by John Keats
(Quoted in full in previous post titled
“Angels among Us: Three Holiday/Anniversary Anecdotes”)

If you have been keeping up with my blog, you will recognize this second opening citation in which I quote John Yeats about a thing of beauty lasting forever.

I used it most recently, for example, in my previous blog post titled “Angels among Us: Three Holiday/Anniversary Anecdotes.”

In that post I applied it to my wife Marion (whom I call Mari) in tribute not only to her lasting beauty over the fifty-three years of our marriage, but also to her devotion and faithfulness in loving me and caring for me throughout those decades.

This devotion and faithfulness has been especially evident during the past two years in which I have been confined for long hours each week in the blood center of a Tulsa hospital. (See the following photo from that post and another photo of the beautiful Mari in the conclusion to this post.)

Mari standing behind me as I rest in my recliner on an IV in the blood center (photo taken from the preceding post)

Part of the results of my blood disease is the loss of eyesight, particularly in the past month or so in which a side-effect of one of my blood medications has left me with damaged retinas, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to read print.

Thus, once again devoted, faithful Mari has had to come to my rescue—this time to help me compose a tribute to a deceased black-haired beauty whom I have already honored profusely throughout my blog. (See, for example, my earlier post titled “My Lifelong Attraction to Black Beauty”).

Elizabeth Taylor in movie National Velvet, the first time I ever saw her in film or in photo as a child and fell in love with her (photo and other similar ones hanging behind my computer)

My rapidly failing eyesight (and other health issues) is the reason I have not published a new post in so long.

I had intended, for example, to compose and publish one in early January titled “Happy Elvis-Mas” about the birthday of my male American Idol Elvis Presley who was born on January 8, 1935, three years before my own birth on November 23, 1938.

However, that inspiration was not to be realized due to my worsening health. I will have to try to compose and publish that post at the time of the commemoration of the King’s death in August.

Thus here is my present attempt to make up a new tribute to my female American Idol, the Lovely Elizabeth Taylor, who was born on February 27 in 1932—six years before my own birth in November 1938.

Most recent photo of Elizabeth Taylor sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo who provided most of the photos in this post and others

Name Your Idols!

“Do not make any idols.”—God’s command to His people in Exodus 34:17 NIV

“Elizabeth Taylor is the most beautiful creature
God ever made—except for Mari, of course!”—Jimmy Peacock

You will note that in the title and introduction to this post I have referred to idols: Elvis Presley as my male American Idol and Elizabeth Taylor as my female American Idol.

Photo of Liz Taylor titled Shorpy (which hangs on the left of my computer)

In evidence of this lifelong attraction to the Late and Lovely Liz I have inserted into this post copies of several photos of her as examples of the fifteen that I have attached around my computer monitor and in the shaving cabinet and on the walls of my tiny half-bath!

And even the fifteen photos featured in my office and half-bath are themselves only samples of the dozens of photos, articles, videos, etc. of her sent to me over the years by others who know of my “worship” of the “Goddess of Beauty.”

Photo of Elizabeth Taylor on cover of Good Housekeeping magazine (hanging behind my computer) as featured in an anecdote in an earlier post titled “My Lifelong Attraction to Black Beauty”

As a retired religious translator, interpreter, and copyeditor, I am of course well aware of the many divine admonitions throughout the Bible to avoid the making of idols in our lives.

In fact, in the entry for May 7 in the 2015 issue of Forward Day by Day, the devotional of the Episcopal Church, which I read daily, there is a direct reference to this subject of idol worship and the importance of naming our idols:

Wisdom 14:27: The worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.

Once an idol is named, it loses its power to seduce. The devil is always giving old idols new names. There are probably no truly new idols, just newer ways of presenting the old in different packaging.

An idol is anything that consumes our time, energy, and devotion, usurping the place of God in our lives. The Seven Deadly Sins of medieval moral theology are all popular idols now called by other names.

The entry goes on to list several deadly sins going by new names that conceal their true identity and nature in our modern society such as pride, lust, gluttony, anger, sloth, avarice, and envy.

It then concludes with the admonition: “Name your idols.” (italics mine)

Even my seeming “worship of feminine beauty” (as in my lifelong fascination with and attraction to the loveliness of Elizabeth Taylor) may be considered a form of idol worship—or it may also be evidence of an appreciation of everything that “[God] has made beautiful in its time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).

Photo of Elizabeth Taylor, one of my favorites (which hangs on the right side of my computer)

In evidence, note the following quotation from the July 30 entry in the popular devotional titled Jesus Calling, which I also read daily along with the French Bible (italics in original):

WORSHIP ME in the beauty of holiness. I created beauty to declare the existence of My holy Being. A magnificent rose, a hauntingly glorious sunset, oceanic splendor—all these things were meant to proclaim My Presence in the world.

Most people rush past these proclamations without giving them a second thought. Some people use beauty, especially feminine loveliness, to sell their products. . . . [italics mine]

. , . [but] you responded to My creation [of beauty] with wonder. This is a gift, and it carries responsibility with it. Declare My glorious Being in the world. The whole earth is full of My radiant beauty—My Glory.

Photo of Elizabeth Taylor as evidence of her beauty even without makeup (photo hanging inside the door of my shaving cabinet)

So in composing blog posts (such as this one) about my “worship” of a deceased Hollywood actress, am I “naming my idols”? Or am I following the biblical command to “declare [God’s] glorious Being in the world” as I “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness [i.e., in the holiness of beauty]”? (Psalm 29:2 KJV)?

Elizabeth Taylor in the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, another favorite of mine (hanging inside the door of my shaving cabinet)

Conclusion:
Worship of Feminine Beautyas Worship of Its Divine Creator

“The reason God quit creating when He made woman
is because He knew that even He
could not improve upon perfection!”—Jimmy Peacock

“Though lovely and fair as the rose of the summerYet, ’twas not her beauty alone that won meOh no! ‘Twas the the truth in her eye ever [dawnin’]That made me love [Mari, the Rose of McGehee].”—“The Rose of Tralee,” traditional Irish folk song
(To view the complete lyrics to this song, click here.
To view the YouTube of this song with lovely scenes of Ireland, click here.)

Mari’s favorite image of Elizabeth Taylor, a drawing stamped on the back: Robin Parker, Artist ahalfbubbleoff.com 936-668-0644 (which hangs on the right side of my computer)

In my opening paragraph to this post I noted that in my preceding post I applied the poetic assertion that “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” to my wife Marion (whom I call Mari) in tribute “not only to her lasting beauty over the fifty-three years of our marriage, but also to her devotion and faithfulness in loving and caring for me throughout those decades.”

My appreciation of that feminine beauty, devotion, and faithfulness in my own spouse is additional evidence that my adulation of Elizabeth Taylor, and indeed of all womankind—what some readers might interpret as “idol worship”—is less worship of feminine beauty itself but of the Creator of that beauty, and indeed the Author and Source of all created Beauty.

Mari, “The Rose of McGehee [Arkansas]” as she looked when we started dating in June 1961 with “her beauty that won me” and “the truth in her eye[s] ever dawnin'” (to enlarge and gaze into those eyes of truth, click on the photo)

After working for hours in an unsuccessful attempt to convert the “Epitome and Icon of Feminine Beauty” photo of Elizabeth Taylor featured above to a .jpg file required by Word Press, I gave up and inserted it into an email to Pat McDermott Scavo asking her to resend it to me in that format.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I could transfer that email photo into My Pictures and from there insert it into the blog post on Liz, as evidenced here.

But imagine my greater surprise and delight when I exited Word Press only to discover that in my computer illiteracy and helpless fumbling about on the keyboard somehow I had inserted that photo as the new screen saver.

Through no plan or intentional effort on my part, my favorite photo of my female American Idol is now spread all across the surface of my computer monitor!

And I don’t even know how to insert or change a screen saver!

Mari says that it was a gift from Elizabeth to me in appreciation of all my hard, painful work in preparing a post to honor Liz on her birthday.

If so, “Thank you, Elizabeth Taylor!”

“As I tell Mari, the Rose of McGehee, ‘Whatever happens in this life, you can be sure of one thing: as long as Jimmy Peacock draws breath, you are loved!'”

The drawing of Elizabeth Taylor noted as Mari’s favorite image of her is identified by a stamped message on the back that reads: Robin Parker, Artist ahalfbubbleoff.com 936-668-0644

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/happy-liz-masname-your-idols/feed/3myokexilelitMari standing behind me as I rest in my recliner on an IV at the blood centerElizabeth Taylor as a child in the movie National VelvetLatest photo of Liz TaylorPhoto of Liz Taylor titled ShorpyPhoto of Elizabeth Taylor on the cover of Good Housekeeping magazinePhoto of Elizabeth Taylor from an ad for her perfume White DiamondsOne o fmy favorite photos of Elizabeth Taylor (hanging next to my computer)Photo of Elizabeth Taylor as evidence of her beauty even without makeupElizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin RoofMari's favorite image of Elizabeth Taylor, a drawing by Robin PerkerMari as we were courting in 1961-62Elizabeth Taylor as the Epitome of Black BeautyAngels among Us: Three Holiday/Anniversary Anecdoteshttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/angels-among-us-three-holidayanniversary-anecdotes/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/angels-among-us-three-holidayanniversary-anecdotes/#commentsMon, 11 Jan 2016 22:07:57 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6504]]>“I have a great confidence in the revelations which holidays [and anniversaries] bring forth.”—Benjamin Disraeli

In my previous post, published on December 4 and titled “The South, Arkansas, and the Delta,” I noted that it would probably be the last post I would publish in 2015 (which it was) due to my advancing age and failing health.

However, although I continue to have to deal with those personal issues, three interesting events took place during the “holiday season” (including our fifty-third wedding anniversary on December 27) so I decided to try to put them together into a new year’s post.

Mari and me at our fiftieth wedding anniversary on December 27, 2012 (to enlarge, click on the photo)

Mari and me at our wedding on December 27, 1962, at the First Baptist Church of McGehee, Arkansas (to enlarge, click on the photo)

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”—Hebrews 13:2 NIV
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”—Hebrews 13:2 KJV

In an earlier post titled “Follow-Up on Fall Updates and Tidbits” I used this opening quote of Hebrews 13:2 NIV in another personal anecdote. This one was from the mid-1970s and recounted my meeting with a Japanese-American woman who had been a detainee at the WWII Rohwer Japanese-American Incarceration Camp near our hometown of McGehee, Arkansas.

This lady was distraught because she lived in Chicago and had no one to take care of her mother’s grave at the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery. I later regretted that I had neglected to show proper “hospitality to strangers” by failing to offer to take care of the grave for her.

In a somewhat similar anecdote titled “Have You Seen Any Angels This Christmas?” from an earlier Christmas post titled “My Après-Blog Post: Saving Mr. Peacock” I related how I felt that I had failed to show full hospitality to a poor single mother and her toddling son in the parking lot of a local drugstore when she asked for enough money for gas to get herself and her young child back home.

Now in a much less significant, but perhaps in a more relevant anecdote to the subject and the season, I was again reminded of this biblical admonition to “show hospitality” or to “entertain” strangers.

Grossly simplified, it related to my physical and emotional health which has virtually robbed me of most of my ability to carry on the ordinary activities of my former daily life.

The emotional aspect revolves around the feeling of being an invalid and more or less a burden to my wife and family rather than a blessing.

Since I was lying in the recliner at home bemoaning my limited movements and activities, naturally I was somewhat vexed when our older grandson Levi called to say he was coming over to visit us (which was fine) . . . and would like for a teenage friend to meet him here.

Earlier photo of our older grandson Levi (for an updated image, see the Christmas 2015 family photo at the end of this post)

I must admit that in my current state I did not feel at all disposed to “welcoming” and “entertaining” a strange teenage boy.

As I was bemoaning the obligations the visit would require of me, Levi called again to inform us that his friend was walking and was bringing his sister, who needed to go to the bathroom!

Naturally, I was even further disturbed at having to welcome and entertain not only the new boy but also the boy’s sister.

To top it off, while walking to our house the boy and his sister became lost so Levi had to try to give them directions by cell phone.

By the time the pair arrived, I was in a real state of nervousness and even physical pain.

When the doorbell finally rang, I responded with a groan.

Then Levi opened the door, and in walked the sister.

She was tiny and beautiful and sweet . . . an absolute doll . . . and she was four years old!

Immediately my entire attitude changed. I melted like a chocolate bar on a hot day! My pain and sickness vanished instantly and completely!

Mari was quickly dispatched to lead the innocent child down the hall to the bathroom while the little girl’s teenage brother visited with Levi and me.

The boy was refreshingly polite and well-mannered, a real joy to converse with in this age of the so-called “generation gap.”

Image how bad I felt about my former attitude toward the young pair before I had even met them.

After our brief visit, Mari decided the walk back to the kids’ grandmother’s house was far too great for the youngsters to undertake, so she put them into the car and drove them back home.

Meanwhile, I was left to squirm in my recliner and regret my immediate and somewhat less than hospitable attitude toward a couple of very nice kids whom I had never met.

I only hope that next time I can learn to do better at showing the Christmas/Christian spirit to strangers, especially during the Holy Seasons of the year.

After all, angels are not always the way we envision them. Sometimes they arrive in the form of teenage boys (like our two grandsons and their friends) . . . and sometimes they enter our lives as little four-year-old girls!

Anecdote Two:
Who Are Angels
And What Do They Do?

“What are the angels, then? They are spirits who serve God
and are sent by him to help those who are to receive salvation.”—Hebrews 1:14 GNT

“Are not all angels ministering spirits
sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”—Hebrews 1:14 NIV

Because of my other health issues, those regular blood infusions usually consist of two units of blood administered in separate sessions over a two-day period.

During each of those procedures I must spend three to four hours sitting in a recliner hooked up to an IV while Mari sits beside me [or in front of me] in a straight chair in a cold and rather stark and sterile room. Although the nurses in the blood center are wonderfully warm and attentive, responding instantly and graciously to our every need and desire, there is no way they or anyone else can speed up the procedures.” (italics mine)

Mari standing behind me as I rest in my recliner wearing my Arkansas Razorback cap while attached to an IV in the blood center (to enlarge, click on the photo)

It was during the recent “holiday season” that the second “angelic” incident occurred, this one at the blood center.

Late in the afternoon while I still had a couple of hours or more to go before the infusion would be complete and I could be released from the IV to which I was attached, Mari received a call on her cell phone from our older grandson Levi, fifteen.

It seems that Levi and his brother Ben, thirteen, had come to our neighborhood to play football with some friends. Since he was in the area Levi decided to visit us to see if we were all right.

Unfortunately, when he discovered that we were not home he also discovered that the garage door through which he had gained entrance to the house would not close.

So he called Mari to ask about us and what to do about the open garage door. He was concerned because he knew that the house directly across the street had recently been burgled and that he had to leave our house to go with a group of friends to another town.

So Mari had to leave me alone in the blood center while she drove home (a forty-five-minute drive) in darkening, rush-hour holiday traffic to close the garage door before we lost everything in the house, especially the numerous presents under the Christmas tree!

While Mari was gone on that hour-and-a-half round trip I was on pins and needles, especially since I could not reach her on my cell phone. All I received each time was a message: “Your call did not go through.”

To make matters worse, Mari was not calling me on her cell phone. So given my fertile imagination and my neurotic nature, I was quickly becoming panicky.

Finally after an hour and a half, the time when Mari should have returned to the blood center safe and sound, I could stand the suspense no longer.

So I asked the kindly nurse attending me to please try to call Mari for me since I was having no luck reaching her.

Just as the obliging nurse did so, she learned that Mari was only a mile from the hospital, and would be there in a matter of minutes.

I was so relieved, but still I waited anxiously to learn what had happened at the house during her absence.

As it turned out, when Mari finally returned to the blood center she told me that Ben had taken matters in hand and had gone to the home of the city policeman who lives two doors down the street and told him:

“The garage door on my grandmother’s house won’t close, and she is coming from the hospital in Tulsa to close it. Can you come watch the house until she gets here?”

Earlier photo of our younger grandson Ben (for an updated image, see the Christmas 2015 family photo at the end of this post)

Fortunately, the policeman was home and agreed to Ben’s request so that when Mari arrived the policeman was out in front of the house protecting it personally.

So some angels appear not only as teenage boys and as four-year-old girls, but also as nurses in scrubs and policemen in uniform.

Note: Later on, Mari hand–delivered a homemade coffee cake to the policeman down the street with a word of thanks for his watching over our house and belongings. Then on our Christmas Eve visit to the blood center Mari expressed our gratitude to the nurses at the center by taking them cookies and other holiday treats. Finally, Mari provided treats of appreciation for the valet parking attendants who render us and the other blood center patients such a wonderful service so that we never have to search for a parking place or walk long distances, especially during inclement weather. These and so many others in our daily lives—most of whom we take for granted—are indeed “angels,” God’s “ministering spirits” on our behalf. God bless them, every one!

“A thing of beauty is a joy for everIts loveliness increases; it will neverPass into nothingness; but still will keepA bower quiet for us, and a sleepFull of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”—“Endymion,” a poem written by John Keats

“A wife of noble characterwho can find?She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in herand lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,all the days of her life. . . .

“Her children arise and call her blessed;her husband also, and he praises her:
‘Many women do noble things,but you surpass them all.’”—Proverbs 31:10-12, 28-29 NIV

Earlier in this post I mentioned the nurses at the blood center and how “wonderfully warm and attentive” they are and how diligent they are in “responding instantly and graciously to our every need and desire.”

Thus it is clear that I include them (and indeed all nurses, especially those who have cared for me in my many health issues) on my list of God’s angels, His “ministering spirits.”

In essence, along with other “public servants” (such as policemen and even the young people who serve as valet parking attendants at the blood center), I hold them in high esteem and great appreciation.

I have thus included them and so many others in our daily lives as “angels unawares.”

But there are others whom I consider “angels awares.”

Mari (first on left) as a blond-haired high-school Christmas angel in the McGehee, Arkansas, Nativity Scene at Christmas time in 1957 (to enlarge, click on the photo)

For example, during the “holiday season” I was nearing the end of my second infusion of blood and was looking forward to being released by the nurses.

As I have noted, during those long hours at the blood center I am confined to a recliner and attached to an IV while Mari has to sit in a straight chair either beside me or in front of me where she passes the time crocheting afghans, prayer shawls, baby blankets, and other lovely and useful items for others.

On this occasion, she was sitting in front of me dressed in her brightest holiday sweater and dangling earrings, with her blond hair glowing like spun gold from the light on her head as she labored diligently and quietly, waiting patiently for the moment when we could be dismissed.

Mari in her Christmas sweater and dangling earrings (with me and Levi reflected in the mirror)

However, for some reason my blood pressure (which the nurses check three times every hour) was extremely high—so high in fact that the nurses would not allow me to leave.

In an instant there were three of them around my chair giving me advice on how to bring it down.

One was saying, “Just relax!”

Another was urging me, “Take deep breaths!”

The third was more specific when she advised me, “Just think of the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to you in your life!”

“That’s easy,” I replied instantly. “I’m looking at her right now!”

Mari as “the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me in my life”! (to enlarge, click on the photo)

Mari (second from left rear, seated directly in front of the queen) as a Senior Homecoming maid (“a thing of beauty”) in the McGehee High School Homecoming Parade (to enlarge, click on the photo)

In response to that “sweet remark,” the nurses were so impressed that (although my blood pressure was still a bit high) they allowed us to leave.

So we did so, with me leaning on my cane with my right hand and holding onto to Mari’s right arm with my left hand: a posture that we have followed physically for the past two years of my illness, and symbolically for the fifty-three years of our marriage.

So I am well aware of at least one of the “angels” (“ministering spirits,” “things of beauty”) whom God has placed in my life and who has served me so well for more half a century.

Is there any wonder that I praise her and her lasting beauty and undying devotion, saying (and writing): “Mari, many women do noble things,but you surpass them all. Happy Anniversary!”

So angels sometimes appear not only as teenage boys and four-year-old girls, as nurses in scrubs and policemen in uniform, and even as valet parking attendants . . . but also as our own life’s partner . . . and family members!

Mari in her 2015 Christmas sweater and dangling earrings with her family (l to r): grandson Ben, Mari, son Keiron, grandson Levi, husband Jimmy (to enlarge, click on the photo)

For more information and photos of Mari throughout her life as an “angel” and “a thing of beauty,” click here.

Conclusion

“Praise theLord,you his angels,you mighty oneswho do his bidding,who obey his word.
Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,you his servantswho do his will.”—Psalm 103:20-21 NIV

“For he [God] will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.”—Psalm 91:11 NIV

As noted in my introduction to this post, I had not intended to publish a new post on this subject of angels. However, since these events involving angels occurred during the “holiday/anniversary season” I decided to try to put them together in this post.

Unfortunately, due to my health and the season’s activities I was not able to publish it earlier during that season.

I hope the delay does not detract from its message and appeal.

The truth is that I had planned to try to put together and publish another very different post during the first week of January.

However, my health and family obligations simply would not allow that rather difficult and complicated undertaking. Perhaps I can compose and publish it later also as a belated message.

Meanwhile, please keep me in your thoughts and prayers that God will continue to send His angels, who do His bidding and obey His Word and His will, to guard and keep me and my family in all our ways.

That is my prayer for you and for everyone else who reads this post and others on my blog. Those readers must be fairly numerous since the blog is now approaching 95,000 visits.

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/angels-among-us-three-holidayanniversary-anecdotes/feed/4myokexilelitJimmy and Marion at our fiftieth wedding anniversaryMari and Jimmy at their wedding on December 27, 1962Japanese-American Memorial Cemetery at Rohwer, ArkansasOur older grandson LeviMari standing behind me as I rest in my recliner on an IV at the blood centerOur younger grandson BenMari (first from left) as a blond-haired high-school Christmas angel in the McGehee, Arkansas, Nativity Scene at Christmas in 1957.Mari in her Christmas sweater and dangly earringsMari as "the most beautiful thing that ever happened in my life"!Mari (second from left directly in front of the queen) as a senior maid (beauty) in the McGehee High School Homecoming paradeMarion with her 2015 Christmas sweater and dangly earrings and familyThe South, Arkansas, and the Deltahttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/the-south-arkansas-and-the-delta/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/the-south-arkansas-and-the-delta/#commentsFri, 04 Dec 2015 19:08:18 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6449]]>“I love the South in general, Arkansas in particular, and the Delta in spite
Now I love them all in absentia. Someday soon I will love them all in memoriam!”
—Jimmy Peacock“. . . laborers in Arkansas and parts of Mississippi . . .
still call the farm up the road the ‘plantation.’”
—List of recommended books from Deep South Magazine on 11/11/15

In my previous recent posts I have presented updates and tidbits on subjects such as the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps in my native Southeast Arkansas, a book about voyages down the Mississippi River, and changes in the production of cotton and the disappearance of the Cotton Kingdom in Arkansas and the Delta.

As a somewhat change of subject matter, in this post I offer updates and tidbits about the South in general, with special emphasis on preserving Southern speech; Arkansas in particular, with a link to a list of subjects about the Natural State; and the Delta in retrospect, especially steamboats on the Mississippi River, the Japanese-American Internment Museum and the Japanese-American Memorial Garden in McGehee, the Delta Heritage Trail, and Arkansas City, all near the Mississippi River.

Note: To enlarge the photos in this post, click on each photo individually.

The South

“The problem with the South has always seemed to be its
long history of good manners and bad judgment!”
—Jimmy Peacock

“I come from just far enough South to temper my inherent Southern fatalism with hope
—which is, of course, the worst kind.”—Jimmy Peacock

Besides these two samples from my many collected quotes about the South (mine and others’) I tried to keep this section brief in order to devote more space to the other subjects in this post.

The American South

However, I would be remiss if I did not insert this link sent to me recently by my McGehee High School classmate Patsy McDermott Scavo. It is a YouTube video of Arkansan Glenn Campbell singing one of his most popular hits: “Southern Nights.”

The video includes beautiful scenes from the state of Georgia, from whose loving bosom my Peacock ancestors migrated to my beloved Southeast Arkansas “just before the Late Unpleasantness Between the States”—thus narrowly averting an unwelcome visit from Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on his famous/infamous “March to the Sea.”

Glenn Campbell

To listen to this classic Southern tune, my tribute to both my fellow Arkansan Glenn Campbell and the South which he praises, click on the title above or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

To view a video of my favorite version of the classic tune “Georgia on My Mind” as sung by Ray Charles (the theme song of reruns of the popular TV show “Designing Women” which got me through a bout with lymphoma back in 1991-92), click on the title or on the URL in the Sources section of this post.

Ray Charles

After composing this brief segment on the South, I received from Patsy McDermott Scavo a link to an article about Southern speech from the Web site titled The Bitter Southerner. Since Southern speech is one of my favorite subjects (which I have examined in several of my previous posts), naturally I felt compelled to insert this review of the article about the defense of the disappearing Southern accent.

In Defense of Southern Speech

“‘Everyone has an instinct to celebrate where they’re from, where they were raised,’ says [Professor Walt] Wolfram. ‘We’ve got this need to come from good places. Southern dialect is part of that heritage–our society is so discriminatory that it’s disguised that fact.'”
–Article titled “With Drawl,”The Bitter Southerner Web site

As noted in the quotation above, on the Web site titled The Bitter Southerner, writer Laura Relyea interviews famed Southern linguist Walt Wolfram and conveys from him much entertaining and informative insight about Southern accents. Part of that insight involves the effect of a Southern accent on the ones who speak with one and especially on those who listen to them.

Any Southerner with a drawl or a twang in the voice is subject to derision, particularly when we venture outside our region. Folks hear the accent and the conclusions come quickly, even if they’re unspoken: We’re stupid. We’re slow. We’re backward. That’s why the work of N.C. State professor Walt Wolfram matters so much. He’s made it his mission to preserve the languages and dialects of the South. Today, writer Laura Relyea presents a great celebration and fierce defense of our twangs. . . .

The Beverly Hillbillies mentioned in The Bitter Southerner article as an example of speakers of poorly regarded Southern speech

“Linguistic discrimination is the most socially acceptable form of discrimination in the United States,” Wolfram told me during our first phone interview this past July. His work is focused on debunking the misperceptions we make based on dialect—by educating and spreading their knowledge through the documentaries they make, by speaking publicly and developing museum and cultural center installations to help spread awareness. . . .

Though it would take a lot for the Southern accent to disappear completely, the combination of the negative stereotypes that accompany a strong twang, along with the influx of non-natives from all over the world to urban areas, is causing the language to change rapidly. . . .

Andy Griffith cited in The Bitter Southerner as an example of a speaker of low-regarded Southern speech

To this day, ill-founded assumptions are made about intellect and social value based only on the sound of one’s voice. Wolfram and his colleagues are doing everything within their power to change that: talk by talk, recording by recording, presentation by presentation.

“Oh, I may wander but when I do,I will never be far from you.You’re in my blood,And I know you’ll always be.Arkansas!You run deep in me.”—Wayland D. Holyfield
Quoted on Web site titled:“Only In Your State: Arkansas”

The Mark Twain on the Arkansas River at Little Rock (to enlarge, click on the photo)

The quote above from a popular video of the song, “Arkansas: You Run Deep in Me,” by Wayland D. Holyfield, contains many glorious photos of fall foliage in Arkansas. Incidentally, this video and song helped me get through a bout with pancreatitis back in 1988. I have used it several times in my past blog posts about Arkansas as home.

“You might be an Arkie if . . . you think the Fall in Eden refers to Autumn in Arkansas!” — Jimmy Peacock (to enlarge, click on the photo)

Go anywhere in the world that you want to go. See all of the world’s sights as you please. Whatever you do, though, good Arkansan, you’ll always miss a part of what you’ll always call home. There’s a certain feeling an Arkansas native gets when driving back from a road trip and seeing the familiar sign at the state line, or when you’re flying home into one of the state’s airports; you’re home again, and it feels good. For those that leave Arkansas permanently, though—there will be certain things you’ll miss. (italics mine)

Me and one of my sons at the Arkansas state line atop the Talimena Drive in the 1980s (to enlarge, click on the photo)

The six natural regions of the state of Arkansas (the Delta is the area in blue on the right along the Mississippi River; to enlarge, click on the photo)

To visit this particular entry about the ten things people miss about Arkansas, which is one of my favorites from among the forty-plus entries on this site, click here or on the actual URL in the Sources section.

A Delta cotton chopper in downtown Marianna, Arkansas, in the 1930s (to enlarge, click on the photo)

To summarize that entry and my feelings about the past, the introduction to this entry reads:

There’s a fascination with photographs from the past, and it’s definitely an understandable quirk! History is preserved in a number of ways, but it’s a great thing when one is able to visually connect with prior generations when just reading about these long-changed locales isn’t enough. These vintage photos from Arkansas, taken during the 1930s and 1940s [the days of my Arkansas childhood], are an awesome trip through an era that holds a huge number of reminiscent stories and memories.” (italics mine)

I agree!

Though this site about Arkansas is obviously written by someone much younger and much more knowledgeable about modern Arkansas than I am—or ever will be again—and though I do not necessarily enjoy or agree with everything written in the individual entries (such as the writer’s assessment of Arkansas’ Southern accents), it may be because of the age/generation gap as reflected in the “reminiscent stories and memories” on which my posts are based.

Arkansas diamond found by twelve-year-old boy at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas

Arkansas state flag with stars formed in the shape of a diamond as a symbol of Arkansas as the Diamond State.

In any case, to learn more about my beloved homeland from one young person’s perspective, I wholeheartedly recommend that you visit this site and all of the entries on it—beginning with my favorites. See what you think—especially if, like me, you too are an “exiled Arkie of the Covenant”!

The Delta

“When I first went north, I was surprised to learn that there were people in the world who did not know that Arkansas has both a delta and a culture that goes with southern lowlands.”—Margaret Jones Bolsterli,
a native of Desha County near McGehee,
writing in Born in the Delta

Steamboats on the Mississippi River as seen from the Great River Road (to enlarge, click on the photo)

As indicated by the quote and photo above, the third subject examined in this post is the Mississippi River Delta, of which so many people outside the state of Arkansas (and many even within the state) are not aware.

The first section of that subject is an update on the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in my hometown of McGehee, about twelve miles from the River.

The WWII Japanese American Internment MuseumAnd the Japanese-American Memorial Garden

On the front page of a recent issue of the McGehee Times there was a brief article titled “You Are Here.” It featured a small map of the city with some of the historic places with directions of how to locate them.

Here is the written copy that accompanied that map:

A new historic map sign has been installed outside the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in downtown McGehee. The sign lets visitors know where they are located and the locations of other historically relevant sites in the city.

According to former Mayor Jack May, the sign was funded by Nexus Systems of Monroe, Louisiana in exchange for the city granting the company permission to install new broadcast towers.

Since opening its doors just over two years ago, the WWII Japanese American Museum has hosted over 6,140 visitors from 28 countries around the world. Just this week, the Museum added Malaysia to its list of countries. [Susan Gallion, Curator of the museum, reports that it has also received visitors from every state in the Union, except Delaware.]

The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and serves as the permanent home for the exhibit “Against Their Will,” a history of the more than 17,000 Japanese Americans forced into the Rohwer and Jerome Relocation Camps during World War II.

For more information on the museum, contact Curator Susan Gallion or Co-Curator Kay Garling Roberts at (870) 222-9168 or visit the Museum’s Facebook page.

The Delta Heritage TrailAnd Arkansas City

“The Delta Heritage Trail stretches through a shaded canopy of native hardwoods, alongside agricultural fields, and across many streams. Wildlife viewing and birdwatching opportunities abound along the trail route due to its diversity of habitats.”
—Arkansas State Parks Delta Heritage Trail Web site

A cypress slough along the Delta Heritage Trail in East Arkansas (to enlarge, click on the photo)

On the Arkansas State Department of Parks and Tourism Web site there is a verbal and photographic presentation of the new Delta Heritage Trail State Park. Part of that presentation is about the Delta Heritage Trail that will begin near Helena in Phillips County on the Mississippi River and extend eighty-four miles downriver to Arkansas City, another river town that serves as the county seat of Desha County in which our hometown of McGehee is located.

Here is a portion of what the Arkansas Parks and Tourism site has to say about the Delta Heritage Trail State Park and the Delta Heritage Trail:

Delta Heritage Trail State Park in southeast Arkansas is being developed under the national ‘rails to trails’ initiative, whereby former railroad lines are converted to pedestrian and bicycle routes. The trail is being developed in phases along the former Union Pacific Railroad right-of-way that stretches from one mile south of Lexa (six miles west of Helena) to Rohwer [site of the WWII Japanese-American Incarceration Camp], and extending via the Mississippi River levee to Arkansas City [our country seat on the Mississippi River].

Delta Heritage Trail sign in Arkansas City (to enlarge, click on the photo)

It will total 84.5 miles when finished, making this one of the longest bike and pedestrian trails in the state. In the northern portion, the first 21 miles of trail have been completed from Helena junction to Elaine. Trailheads are at Helena junction near Lexa, Walnut Corner at the U.S. 49 overpass, Lick Creek (Ark. 85 just south of Barton), Lake View, and Elaine. The compacted, crushed rock trail leads through a shaded canopy of native hardwoods, alongside agricultural fields, and across streams.

Wildlife viewing and birdwatching opportunities abound along the route here in the heart of the Delta and the famed Mississippi Flyway. At the park visitor center, brochures include the guide to wildlife watching along the trail.

Close-up view of the Delta Heritage Trail sign in Arkansas City (to enlarge, click on the photo)

When completed, the trail will also offer sweeping views from bridges that span the Arkansas River and the White River.

The Red Star grocery store facing the Mississippi River levee in Arkansas City (to enlarge, click on the photo)

Planned Delta Hotel in Arkansas City (to enlarge, click on the photo)

Note: Be sure to view the changing photographic slideshow of scenes in and near Arkansas City featured in the masthead of the site.

Conclusion

“In the life of a writer there are no extraneous experiences.”
(Everything that happens to him is grist for his mill.)
—Anonymous

“There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’rIn the precious blood of the Lamb.”—“There Is Power in the Blood,” Lewis E. Jones (1899)

(To hear this old hymn sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford, click on the title.)

Earlier in this post I told how listening to Wayland Holyfield singing “Arkansas, You Run Deep in Me” helped me to get through a bout with pancreatitis back in 1988.

Later in the post I told how watching reruns of the popular old TV show “Designing Women,” whose theme song “Georgia on My Mind” as sung by Ray Charles, helped me get though a bout with lymphoma back in 1991-92.

More recently, on April 3, 2015, I published a post titled “Infusion Inspiration: Memory Flood at the Center for Blood.” In that post I described (with photos) my ongoing bout with a lingering blood disease. I noted that I am doing battle with that disease by spending long hours in the blood center at a Tulsa hospital where I pass the time by listening to old cassette tapes of some of my favorite singers from the past such as Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Gospel.

To revisit that post, click on the title above or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

Unfortunately, since my health progress is somewhat hindered this will have to be my final post for this year and probably for the foreseeable future.

I regret the cessation since the blog has now reached more than 93,000 visits since its launch in May 2011; I had hoped to be able to continue blogging until it reached my personal goal of 100,000.

The photo of the Mark Twain riverboat on the Arkansas River at Little Rock was sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo on July 30, 2013, and cited in my earlier post titled:
“A Few of My Favorite Things II: Arkansas. The South, Elvis Presley, Gone With the Wind” at:https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2013/10/

The link to Wayland Holyfield singing “Arkansas: You Run Deep in Me” was taken from:

The photo titled “Autumn in Arkansas” was taken from a postcard produced by Jenkins Enterprises, North Little Rock, AR 501-945-2600.

The personal photo of me at the Arkansas state line on the Talimena Scenic Drive that runs across the tops of the Ouachita Mountains between Southeast Oklahoma and Southwest Arkansas was made in the 1980s when I was much younger and slimmer.

The Welcome to Arkansas: The Natural State sign that appears at every entrance into the state was taken from the cover of Arkansas Destinations, 2013 Fall and Winter issue.

The map of the regions of Arkansas with the state’s visitor centers was taken from the 2013 issue of Living in Arkansas magazine.

The photo of the East Arkansas cotton chopper standing in front of a Marianna downtown storefront was made by Carl Mydans in 1936 (two years before my birth in Selma, Arkansas) and taken from a book titled A Photographic Legacy by I. Wilmer Counts, Jr.

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/the-south-arkansas-and-the-delta/feed/4myokexilelitThe American SouthGlenn CampbellRay CharlesThe Beverly Hillbillies as mention negatively on The Bitter SouthernerAndy Griffith cited on The Bitter Southerner as a speaker of poor Southern speechThe Mark Twain on the Arkansas River at Little RockAutumn in ArkansasMe and one of my sons at the Arkansas state line in the 1980sArkansas welcome signThe six natural regions of ArkansasA Delta cotton chopper in downtown Marianna, Arkansas, in the 1930sA diamond found by a twelve-year-old boy at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in ArkansasState flag of Arkansas with stars formed in shape of a diamondSteamboats on the Mississippi River as seen from the Great River RoadJapanese-American Internment Museum in McGehee, ArkansasJapanese-American Memorial Garden in McGehee, ArkansasA cypress slough along the Delta Heritage Trail in East ArkansasDelta Heritage Trail sign in Arkansas CityClose-up view of the Delta Heritage Trail sign in Arkansas CityThe Red Star store facing the levee in Arkansas CityDelta Hotel in Arkansas CityFollow-Up on Fall Updates and Tidbitshttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/follow-up-on-fall-updates-and-tidbits/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/follow-up-on-fall-updates-and-tidbits/#commentsMon, 16 Nov 2015 16:31:53 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6405]]>Introduction

“While I was complaining to God about all the things I can no longer do because of my advancing age and declining health, His response to my woeful lament was, ‘You can write!’” [Maybe so, I just hope I can keep it up!]
—Jimmy Peacock

“Jimmy, don’t quit writing. . . . Stay busy.
You have a talent that few men are blessed with.”—Fran Howell Pearson, a member of Mari’s high school Clique,
in a personal email after my last post of updates and tidbits

In my previous post titled “Fall Updates and Tidbits” I began with some opening quotes about my writing and continued with updates and tidbits about several subjects related to the Arkansas Delta.

In this follow-up post to that one I examine several related subjects such as: a new nonfiction book about the youth who were confined in the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps in Southeast Arkansas; an update from Gayle Harper on the Delta signings of her book about her voyages on the Mississippi River; and additional material about the history of cotton and cotton production.

In my next post, a second-part follow-up to this one, I will discuss other nonrelated subjects such as Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Halloween and All Saints’ Day, etc.

Note: To enlarge the photos, click on each one individually.

Article on Book about Japanese-American Youth
in WWII Incarceration Camps in Arkansas

“During World War II, thousands of Japanese American youth and their families
were uprooted and sent to camps in Arkansas
where they were left to ponder their fate.”—“Japanese youth describe life behind barbed wire,”McGehee Times, October 21, 2015

As indicated by the quote above, on October 21, the McGehee Times published a review of a new nonfiction book about the Japanese-American youth who were confined along with their families in the two SEARK WWII incarceration camps.

In the past I have published several posts about the incarceration camps and their detainees including a post about the opening of the WWII Japanese-American Internment Museum in my hometown of McGehee; follow-up posts on visits to the museum and the site of the former camps by some of the surviving Japanese-American detainees; two novels about fictional youthful characters who experienced the effects of the camps personally from both inside and outside the camps; a nonfiction documentary about the camps and the fate of those Japanese-Americans who elected to remain behind in Arkansas after the camps were closed, etc.

Japanese-American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas

Former Japanese-American internees visiting the McGehee museum and Rohwer camp site

Now it is my pleasure to offer excerpts from a recent review of a new nonfiction book about the young people in those camps.

During World War II, thousands of Japanese American youth and their families were uprooted and sent to camps in Arkansas where they were left to ponder their fate.

The story of how these young people coped with their years in Arkansas is now available in a new book—A Captive Audience: Voices of Japanese American Youth in World War II Arkansas—just published by Butler Center Books.

Using archival primary material such as photographs, yearbooks, artwork, and first-person written accounts, A Captive Audience gives an inside look at the experiences of young people in the Rohwer and Jerome Relocation Centers in Arkansas. . . .

Intended for young-adult readers (while also appealing to adults), the book explores important dimensions of Arkansas and U.S. history, including what it means to be an American. . . .

The book is available at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System, 100 Rock Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 72201; or from the Butler Web site at www.butlercenter.org; from other bookstores; from online retailers (such as Amazon.com); and from the University of Arkansas Press (via University of Chicago Press) at (800) 621-2736.

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing
some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”—Hebrews 13:2 NIV

“May the people of Arkansas keep in beauty and reverence forever
the ground where our bodies sleep.”—Inscription in Japanese on monument in Rohwer Memorial Cemetery,
as quoted in A Captive Audience, p. 107

At the beginning of the preceding section I wrote about the numerous blog posts that I have published about different aspects of the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps; novels about the camp and its detainees; documentary films about the camps and some of the Japanese-Americans who elected to remain behind in Arkansas after the camps were closed, etc.

As such, one might wonder why I have dedicated so much time, energy, and space to the subject of the camps and those forced to occupy them.

Beside my natural interest in these subjects, as a native of Southeast Arkansas and an avid amateur cultural and geographical historian, there is another more personal connection between me and the camp residents.

Back in the mid-seventies, after a long absence from our beloved homeland, my family and I were back living in our hometown of McGehee, Arkansas, about twelve miles from the Rohwer Japanese-American Incarceration Camp and Rohwer Memorial Cemetery.

At that time, some forty years ago, there was much less interest shown by the media or many Arkansans, even in Southeast Arkansas, in regard to the camps and those who had inhabited them some thirty years earlier.

As such, one Sunday afternoon, my wife Marion and I decided to take our two young sons for a drive out to the camp site to acquaint our boys with the camp and the history it represented. We assumed that would probably be the only time in their lives that the boys would ever experience the camp site personally. Nor did we expect our future grandchildren to ever have a personal encounter with the camp and cemetery—sadly, both assumptions being totally accurate. Regrettably, we also have never revisited the camp and cemetery site, nor do we expect ever to be able to do so, due to our advancing age and declining health.

That day, just as we were driving up over the railroad tracks onto the gravel road that led into the camp, we met another car with a middle-aged couple in it. The woman was obviously Japanese-American.

Rohwer Memorial Cemetery sign

Rolling down our windows we began to become acquainted and to share information about each other, such as the fact that we were local residents and they were from Chicago, Illinois.

It turned out that the reason the couple had driven so far to visit the camp and cemetery that Sunday afternoon was because the Japanese-American woman had been a resident of the camp when she was young—perhaps as a child or perhaps as a teenager, as portrayed in the book A Captive Audience.

The sad part was that we learned that the woman’s mother had died while incarcerated in the camp and was buried in the cemetery there. The woman was in tears because she said that she and her husband would probably never have another chance to visit the site and cemetery and that she had no one there to take care of her mother’s grave.

It was only after we had parted and gone our separate ways that my wife and I began to realize that we had not offered to take care of the grave site for that grieving Japanese-American woman, a weekly task that would have cost us very little in time, money, or effort.

Sadly, we also realized that we had not exchanged names and addresses or phone numbers with our visitors.

Although we searched intently for information about them, we were never successful in locating them to offer them our meager services, albeit belated.

Ever since that time forty years ago, Mari and I have felt that we failed in our duty to fully “show hospitality to strangers” or to “keep in beauty and reverence forever the ground where [their] bodies sleep.”

Rohwer Japanese-American Memorial Cemetery

So although I can never offer the service needed by that Japanese-American woman and her late mother, perhaps now my blog posts about the camps, their residents, and the vestiges they have left behind—including in this case members of their own families—will be at least symbolic of our unexpressed but continuing interest, care, and concern.

We hope so.

Note: To learn more about the preservation of the graves of the Japanese-Americans buried at the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery, there is a brief video titled “Meet the Locals of the Japanese-American Internment Museum in McGehee,” which mentions this subject. To view it, click on the title or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post. The two locals who narrate the video are Susan Gallion, curator of the Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee, and Rosalie Santine Gould, former mayor of McGehee, both of whom have been instrumental in preserving the camp’s history and artifacts.

Latest Update of Gayle Harper’s Delta Signing of Her Book
about Her Voyage down the Mississippi River

“Thanks, Jimmy –
You just keep on keepin’ on!”—Gayle Harper about my continued writing
about her and her book despite my poor health

In my last post I included a section on Gayle Harper’s book about her 90-day voyage down the Mississippi River and some of the recent awards she and the book have received.

In this post I include a follow-up on her more recent book signings, including those in St. Louis and her hometown of Springfield, Missouri.

St. Louis, Missouri

Afterward, Gayle offered this information about her book signings in the Delta:

The Delta

Then, its back to the Delta—to the land of hot tamales, fried green tomatoes and soulful music! Here are the events that are open to the public:

“Thanks to their [cotton laborers’] often ill-paid efforts,
about 98 percent of all garments
sold in the United States today are made abroad.”—Southeast Arkansas native Taylor Prewitt
in his review of Sven Beckert’s book Empire of Cotton: A Global Industry

In my previous post titled “Fall Updates and Tidbits” I used words and photos to examine the decline and virtual disappearance of cotton and its production in the Arkansas Delta.

In this post I offer a follow-up on that subject.

It is based primarily on a query I sent recently to Taylor Prewitt, a native of Southeast Arkansas whose family has been involved in cotton farming for generations.

The query I sent to Taylor on October 24 was about the differences in the old traditional square cotton bales we often still associate with cotton harvesting, versus the new huge round bales or modules produced by modern multi-row mechanical cotton pickers, and the ultra-modern oblong modules of cotton covered with a yellow tarp that are now seen alongside harvested cotton fields.

Old-style square cotton bales from days gone by in McGehee, Arkansas

Modern Arkansas Delta round cotton bales with Razorback inscriptions

Modern Arkansas Delta oblong cotton module

Taylor’s response to my query was that he did not have first-hand knowledge of the new round bales but noted that it does take four round bales to make a modern square bale.

Modern round Arkansas Delta cotton bales with Arkansas Razorback and Halloween decorations (as featured on the front page of the October 28 issue of the McGehee Times; to enlarge, click on the photo)

Then Taylor Prewitt added: “I took some pictures of our cotton harvest a few weeks ago, and I’ll send some of them in another email.”

Concluding his personal response to me, Taylor wrote: “I read a fascinating book about cotton this summer, and I’m attaching my review I wrote of it.”

In regard to Taylor’s review of that book, here is his introduction to it:

Any history of cotton is likely to be disturbing to a boy whose father and grandfather raised cotton, and who still rents the family land for cotton farming. And though Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) may not be surprising, it is disturbing. It puts the American cotton farmer in his place. . . .

If American cotton is inconsequential in the world market . . . the driving force in today’s world cotton market . . . [are] a few . . . giant corporate retailers that pull rather than push the world’s cotton traffic. . . Those who pick the cotton in the fields and work in the mills receive poverty-level pay for their efforts. . . . Thanks to their often ill-paid efforts, about 98 percent of all garments sold in the United States today are made abroad. . . .

Later, Taylor began to insert some verbatim quotations from the book emphasizing some of the crucial changes in cotton production from the past, and some of the negatives of modern cotton production of which most Americans are not aware:

Yet while a century ago your shirt would likely have been sewn in a shop in New York or Chicago, using fabric spun and woven in New England, from bolls grown in the American South, today it is probably made of cotton grown in China, India, Uzbekistan, or Senegal, spun and woven in China, Turkey, or Pakistan, and then manufactured in a place like Bangladesh or Vietnam. . . .

Using his own farm as an example of the changes that have come to cotton production Taylor noted:

Our farm is one of the few in our area that can still plant cotton, because most of the farmers have sold their pickers, for about a hundred thousand dollars apiece, to be broken down and shipped to China. (A new picker costs about eight hundred thousand dollars and produces its own bales, bypassing the production of modules to be hauled to the gin to be made into bales.)

Mechanical pickers are not even mentioned in this exhaustive 443-page book, printed in 2014. Cheap foreign labor can produce cotton . . . so much more cheaply that mechanical pickers are as irrelevant as is the rest of the American system of growing cotton.

I think the fact that most of the world’s cotton is picked by hand, and that China is just now beginning to buy our used cotton pickers, says a lot. Also the fact that American cotton farmers who have sold their pickers to China for $100,000 can’t get back into cotton farming without spending $850,000 for a big new picker.

As a fitting illustration and conclusion to this segment on the demise of cotton production in the Arkansas Delta and the close of the 2015 Delta cotton harvesting and ginning season, here are three old photos from days gone by of picking, weighing, and loading cotton near McGehee, Arkansas. They were sent by Patsy McDermott Scavo on October 25 and labeled “Photos from McGehee Times Archives that Dwane [Powell, a McGehee native] rescued from the garbage!”

When cotton was king in Southeast Arkansas

Weighing in cotton after being picked by hand by farm laborers

Loading old-style square cotton bales in McGehee, Arkansas

On a lighter and more recent note, here is a photo Patsy Mc sent to me recently with the caption: “Ginger bread Christmas Delta house for a competition in Memphis.”

Patsy Mc’s photo of a Delta Christmas ginger bread house

Also, here are some closing season photos of current cotton picking and ginning in Southeast Arkansas sent to me by Patsy Mc on October 26 with her personal note:

Lakeport Plantation posted photos on Facebook today. It was the last day of ginning this year at the Epstein gin in Lake Village, Arkansas. The Epstein gin has been ginning cotton since 1917.

Square cotton bales at Epstein gin

View of the machinery inside the Epstein gin

Close-up view of the machinery inside the Epstein gin

Conclusion

“In 1862, British merchant John Benjamin Smith boasted that the manufacture of cotton yarn and cloth had become ‘the greatest industry that ever had or could by possibility have ever existed in any age or country.’”—Glenn C. Altschuler, “Book Review:
“Empire of Cotton: A Global Industry,”
Tulsa World Online, January 25, 2015

In addition to Taylor Prewitt’s review of the book Empire of Cotton: A Global Review, in an earlier post I referred to the Tulsa World Online review of the same book about cotton production and worldwide changes in it, especially in Arkansas.

That earlier post was written by Glenn C. Altschuler.

According to Altschuler, the book, written by Sven Beckert, shows how the cotton industry shaped the world. Interesting, despite the decline and virtual disappearance of the once predominant Cotton Kingdom in the Arkansas Delta, it is claimed in the article that “worldwide cotton production is expected to triple or quadruple by 2050.”

To read this second informative review of this book about the history and future of cotton production that appeared in my earlier post titled “Delta Addenda, Etc., Part I,” click on the title of the post or the URL in the Sources section.

Finally, as a closing word on this segment of the post about cotton and its dwindling production and seemingly imminent demise, here are two photos from Joe Dempsey’s “Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind” blog post published on November 2. The rather dismal photos are of Southeast Arkansas cotton fields after they have been harvested by modern mechanical cotton pickers.

Joe Dempsey harvested cotton field I

Joe’s original caption for this photo read: “This once ‘white unto harvest’cotton field is now stubble. Next spring the cycle will start again.”

Joe Dempsey’s harvested cotton field II

Joe’s original caption for this photo was: “Not all cotton lintis picked up by the mechanical picker. What’s left will nourish the next crop. This is somewhat exaggerated since it is at the end of a row.”

Note Joe’s incisive captions about the sadness of these virtually denuded fields left to lie fallow until a new crop will be sown later—but perhaps that crop will not be cotton!

Sources

The quotation, excerpts, and publication information on the new nonfiction book, A Captive Audience, about the Japanese-American youth confined in the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps in Southeast Arkansas, were taken from an article titled “Japanese youth describe life behind barbed wire,” published in the McGehee Times on October 21, 2015, and used with permission.

The photos of the WWII Japanese-American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas, and the group of Japanese-American former detainees who visited McGehee were taken from the McGehee Times and used with permission.

The photos of the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery sign and the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery on the camp grounds were taken from the McGehee Times and used with permission.

The video titled “Meet the Locals of the Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee,” was composed by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. The link to it was sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo on November 7, 2015. It can be accessed at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEL8VS0Jl9I&feature=share

The three photos of Gayle Harper’s book Roadtrip with a Raindrop; the city of St. Louis, Missouri; and the cotton boll, along with information about her signing of the book in the Mississippi River Delta, were taken from an email update sent by Gayle on October 29.

The photos of the three different types of cotton bales and modules were sent to me by a Southeast Arkansas native whose name I no longer recall.

The photos of Taylor Prewitt’s Southeast Arkansas cotton harvest in 2015 were sent to me by Taylor on October 24 along with his personal remarks about cotton production and his review of the book Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert.

The three photos from days gone by of cotton picking, weighing, and loading in McGehee, Arkansas, were sent to me on October 25 by Patsy McDermott Scavo and attributed to McGehee native Dwane Powell who “rescued them from the garbage” at the McGehee Times.

The photo of the ginger bread Christmas Delta house was sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo from an unknown source.

The photos of the final ginning for the 1915 season at the Epstein gin in Lake Village, Arkansas, as featured on Facebook by the Lakeport Plantation, were sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo in an email on October 26.

“Have you ever wondered where the nice people are?
Have they all moved to Arkansas?”
[i.e., “Have all the exiled Arkies (except Mari and me)
moved back to the Holy Land?”]
—Jay Cronley,
Jay Cronley, “Niceness rare, but always welcomed,”Tulsa World, September 11, 2015

In my past post, which I published on July 14, 2015, I noted that due to my failing health, especially my failing eyesight, I would have to wait until fall to try to compose and publish a new post.

Since it has now been three months, and since my health and eyesight have both improved somewhat, I thought I would try to put together a few of the dozen or more updates and tidbits sent to me during that time period.

I will begin with some items related to my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas, beginning with the obituary of Charles Allbright; the Arkansas Delta; cotton production; Delta plantations; and proceed to some related subjects such as a film about the Southeast Arkansas WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps, the Mississippi River, etc.

Note: To enlarge the photos, click on each one individually.

Special Tribute to Charles Allbright.the Arkansas Traveler Columnist

“As a child in rural Selma, Arkansas, the only thing I ever wanted to be was an artist. However, since I could neither draw nor paint I eventually realized that I had to learn to make ‘word pictures.’ I had been writing for twenty-five years before I recognized that the theme of all of my writing is . . . LOSS!”—Jimmy Peacock

“Jimmy, you’ve got it. You just need a place to put it!”—Personal 1981 letter from Charles Allbright to Jimmy Peacock

Just as I was finishing up this post I received an email on October 25 from Patsy McDermott Scavo, a fellow classmate from the 1956 McGehee High School graduating class and known to us as Patsy Mc. It consisted of a link to an obituary of Charles Allbright, the former Arkansas Traveler columnist for the Little Rock newspapers, who called McGehee his hometown.

As noted in my email response to Patsy Mc below, Charles was especially helpful to me by his friendship and his encouragement of my writing, particularly so after learning that his boyhood “crush,” whom he wrote about often and who had lived next door to him in McGehee, was my wife’s first cousin.

Mari and I will miss Charles and his delightful sense of “down home” humor:

Patsy Mc:

Thanks for sharing this link to the tribute to Charles Allbright.

As you know, Charles was a great supporter of me and my writing. Over a period of twenty years he printed lots of my personal anecdotes in his Arkansas Traveler column in the ArkansasGazette and then in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Back in about 1981 I first introduced myself to him by a typewritten letter opening with the bold statement: ‘I WANT YOUR JOB—or at least one similar to it’! Over that twenty-year length of our communication (and even one face-to-face visit with me and Mari), I made it clear that I hoped to inherit his job when he retired.

Of course, that never happened, for one thing because I had no newspaper experience, and second because I was no longer a resident of Arkansas.

I will always be grateful to Charles for providing me ‘a place to put it’ and for giving me recognition in my much-missed and much-beloved home state, and confidence in my ability to write about it—which became the basis of my blog which has now reached more than 91,000 visits!

Jimmy

To read that obituary and tribute to Charles Allbright, click here or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

Updates and Tidbits on McGehee and the Delta

“After six years on the [Arkansas] Parks and Tourism Commission I can happily report that 2016 will be ‘The Year of The Delta.’ Advertisements, ‘Meet the Locals,’ segment and more are Delta related.”—Cindy Smith, “Parks & Tourism News,”McGehee Times, September 30, 2015

In her regular column in the McGehee Times, Cindy Smith (who earlier owned and operated a gift and souvenir shop in McGehee called the Periwinkle Place), wrote about a Parks & Tourism video about the Arkansas Delta. In that report Cindy noted:

P. Allen Smith even did a 6-minute segment traveling the Delta that will receive national publicity.

From Miller’s Mud Mill to our museum [the WWII Japanese American Internment Camp Museum in McGehee] & history, to Lakeport Plantation, the [Japanese-American] memorial cemetery at Rohwer, the Delta Heritage Trail, Johnny Cash’s Boyhood Home, James Hayes’ glass, to the new Hampton Museum being built in Wilson, the Delta is embracing its history and culture and our advertising will show it.

Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in the Northeast Arkansas Delta (to enlarge the image and read the sign, click on the photo)

The Dyess Colony, location of Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in the Northeast Arkansas Delta

To view this video about the Arkansas Delta, which opens with scenes of an East Arkansas cypress slough, a Mississippi River paddleboat, agricultural fields, Delta blues musicians, and other Delta subjects, click here or click on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

That Delta video link was sent to me on September 18, 2015, by Patsy McDermott Scavo.

On September 19, 2015, Patsy Mc sent me these photos of an abandoned sharecropper shack and a mechanical cotton picker in operation at the Pickens Plantation in our home country of Desha County, Arkansas.

An abandoned sharecropper’s shack on the Pickens Plantation in the Arkansas Delta

A mechanical cotton picker in operation on the Pickens Plantation in the Arkansas Delta

On September 22 Patsy Mc also sent me a link to a Blues music video titled “Just Can’t Cross that River (at Arkansas City, Ark)” written and sung by fellow McGehee native Marty Denton with several striking Delta scenes from days gone by. To view it, click on the title or access it at its actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

A close-up view of an Arkansas Delta sharecropper’s shack in a cotton field, a scene which is fast disappearing, if not indeed gone forever

On October 1, 2015, Judy Roberts one of Mari’s McGehee High School Clique friends (see my earlier post titled “My Annual Tributes to the Clique”) called Mari to tell her that Steve Bender, Southern Living’s “Grumpy Gardener,” had used a letter Judy had sent him about Mari’s brown cotton.

A photo of Judy Robert’s letter about Mari’s brown cotton as featured in Steve Bender’s “Grumpy Gardener” column (to enlarge the image and read the letter, click on the photo)

To read that letter and Bender’s October 1 column on the subject of brown cotton, click here or click on the actual URL in the Sources section of this post.

A photo of Mari’s brown cotton as featured in an earlier post on this blog

More about Cotton

“It was down in Louisiana,Just about a mile from Texarkana,In them ole cotton fields back home. . .

“I was over in Arkansas when the sheriff said,
‘What did you come here for?’
In them ole cotton fields back home.”—Song written and sung by Bluesman Ledbelly
(Note: Lyrics may vary from source to source)

In addition, on October 1, 2015, Patsy Mc sent me a link to a musical video with Bluesman Ledbelly singing his own composition titled “Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home” which focuses on the Ark-La-Tex region near Texarkana Arkansas/Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana.

To view that video, click on the title or access it through the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

In his “Weekly Grist for the Eyes and Mind” post on October 6, 2013, my longtime friend and Ouachita Baptist College buddy Joe Dempsey featured this photo of an Arkansas Delta cotton field taken from the levee (to view the entire post click on the title or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post):

Joe Dempsey’s photo of an Arkansas Delta cotton field taken from the levee

More recently, on October 14, 2015, Barbara Barnes, a native of Southeast Arkansas, sent me a photo of a cotton field ready for harvest with this note, “Cotton looking good in SE Arkansas this year”:

Barbara Barnes’ photo of a Southeast Arkansas Delta cotton field

Despite Barbara’s optimistic report of cotton production in Southeast Arkansas, a recent online article noted that this year’s cotton crop in Arkansas will be the lowest in its history. Dated June 26 and titled “Arkansas Cotton Acreage to Drop to Historic Low,” the article noted:

Depressed prices and rain have caused a more than 30 percent drop this year in the land area planted to cotton in Arkansas.

Experts at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Research and Extension estimated that fewer than 200,000 acres of cotton were planted this market year—the lowest number of acres in Arkansas’ cotton growing history. The previous low was reached in 2013 when about 310,000 acres of the once plentiful Arkansas crop were planted. . . .

In the meantime, [economist Scott] Stiles said less cotton means fewer running gins and fewer warehouses dedicated to storing the crop. The state had 35 cotton gins in 2014, down from 86 in 2000, he said. . . .

In 1930, Arkansas’ peak production year, the state harvested about 3.49 million acres of cotton. By 2006, that number had dropped to 1.16 million acres. [Note: A recent article on cotton production that appeared in the McGehee Times estimated that in 2015 Arkansas would have only 125,000 acres devoted to cotton!]

Tommy Wilson, the community outreach coordinator for the Memphis Cotton Museum, who grew up in McCormick about 130 miles northeast of Little Rock, said he remembers a sea of cotton that ‘really did look like snow for as far as you could see.’ He said when he drives home now those fields are full of soybeans and corn.

‘In some ways it’s sad, but it’s a sign of the times,’ Wilson said.

To read the entire article on this subject, click here or on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post. Additional, more technical information about cotton production and its influence worldwide will be featured in the next post on this blog.

Lakeport Programs on Plantations and Slavery in ArkansasAnd the History of Chicot County

“The Rossmere Plantation, founded in the 1830s by George Read IV, was located on the east side of Lake Chicot, south of Stuart’s Island. In 1861, the plantation had over 1300 acres and 61 slaves. One of those slaves, Lucretia Alexander, was interviewed by the WPA in the 1930s.”—Lakeport Plantation report on the Civil War
and slavery in Southeast Arkansas

“The book [Images of Chicot County] begins with an 1823 sketch of Point Chicot, the county’s first seat, and also includes several images of the plantation houses—now mostly gone.”
—Lakeport Plantation report on the history of Chicot County

On the subject of cotton production in Arkansas, especially in Southeast Arkansas, on July 22, 2015, Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village released this report of an upcoming presentation on the subject of the Civil War and its effect on Chicot County in which Lakeport is located:

Annie Read Reeves, a widow with four children, left New Castle, Delaware in October 1861 during the first year of the Civil War. They arrived at the Rossmere Plantation on Old River Lake in Chicot County on November 22.

Annie and her brother George Read IV (1812-1859) were the great-grandchildren of George Read I, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her late brother founded Rossmere in the 1830s and her sister-in-law, Susan (Chapman) Read, still resided there in 1861.

Reeves’ diary (1861-1863) details her trip to Chicot County and experiences during the Civil War. [Lakeport assistant director Blake] Wintory will discuss the diary and what we know about the Read family and plantation from other sources: deeds, tax records, Susan Read’s letters, a memoir by Annie’s daughter, and a slave narrative.

Frontal view of Lakeport Plantation with its historical marker (to enlarge the image and read the historical marker, click on the photo)

In a personal email on October 21, Blake Wintory wrote: “I just got back from a research trip to Delaware and Washington, DC. George Read II’s house in New Castle is a historic site owned by the Delaware Historical Society.”

Earlier, on August 31, 2015, Lakeport announced a review of a book about the history of Chicot County (which happens to be the county in which both my wife and our older son were born):

Images of Chicot County tells the story of Chicot County through vintage photos. The book includes chapters on the county’s three principle towns (Dermott, Lake Village, and Eudora) as well as chapters on the county’s early years, Lake Chicot, and rural life.

The book begins with an 1823 sketch of Point Chicot, the county’s first seat, and also includes several images of the plantation houses—now mostly gone. Gracing the cover of the book is an image of the Lake Village Water Carnival, the signature event for the county in the 1920s. Proceeds benefit the Lakeport Plantation, an Arkansas State University Heritage Site. (italics mine)

The Images of Chicot County book is now officially published. The book retails for $21.99 +tax and is available at Lakeport or any online retailer.

“‘Relocation, Arkansas’ is a uniquely Arkansas story.”
—AETN invitation to a preview showing of a documentary film on WWII
Japanese-American incarceration camps in Southeast Arkansas

“Leave it to Rosalie Gould, the plain-spoken mayor of McGehee, Ark.,
which is as Delta as a town comes, to shatter . . .” [any false impressions of the Delta].”
—Paul Greenberg, “Delta Cheated Again,”Tulsa World, October 30, 1989

In another aspect of the Arkansas Delta, recently Patsy McDermott Scavo shared with me information about a October 8 preview screening of a new documentary film titled “Relocation, Arkansas” about the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps in Southeast Arkansas.

Titleboard for “Relocation, Arkansas” as featured on the AETN invitation to the preview showing of the full version of the film by Vivienne Schiffer

According to the invitation to the preview showing of that film sent out by the AETN Foundation which sponsored the event . . .

The film [by author/filmmaker Vivienne Gould Schiffer] explores the effect of the incarceration experience on the generation that was born after camp, the search for community and identity, and the unlikely experiences of the Japanese-American families who remained behind in Arkansas after the war years.

It also tells the story of the courageous fight of a small town [McGehee] Arkansas mayor of Italian descent, Rosalie Santine Gould, who saw the Japanese Americans not as enemies but as friends who had been wronged.

Artistic image of some of the buildings at the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camp at Rohwer, Arkansas, near McGehee (image taken from the AETN invitation to the preview screening of Vivienne Schiffer’s documentary film “Relocation, Arkansas”)

The symbol of Mayor Gould’s commitment to historical preservation is her remarkable collection of incarceration camp art—now residing at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies as her gift to the people of Arkansas and those Japanese Americans who have involuntarily called Arkansas their home.

I have written about this subject of the WWII Japanese-American incarceration camps in several previous posts on this blog. One of those posts titled “Updates: Japanese-American Relocation Camp Museum; Camp Nine; Relocation Arkansas” was published on May 14, 2014. As indicated by its title, the post was an update on the opening of the WWII Japanese-American Internment Camp Museum in McGehee; Camp Nine, the novel about the camp at Rohwer, Arkansas, written by Vivienne Gould Schiffer (the daughter of Rosalie Santine Gould); and preview videos of the film “Relocation, Arkansas,” Vivienne’s documentary film which has now been released in its full length.

To access that post, click on the title above or on the URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

Gayle Harper’s Update on Her Bookabout Her Voyage on the Mississippi River

“Wow! [The steamboat American Queen is] pure elegance from bow to stern! The people were amazing, food was to die for and it was a perfect fit to share with these river-lovers the tales of Roadtrip with a Raindrop. It turned out that the water on the Mississippi was too high for this magnificent 6-story vessel to fit under the bridge at St. Louis, so she changed course and headed up the Ohio. It was great fun for me as it was all new territory—and truly beautiful! I was on board for 8 days and I loved every minute!”
—Gayle Harper’s Report on Her Recent Trip on the Mississippi River

A view of the magnificent riverboat American Queen

Back on September 9, Gayle Harper published this update on her voyage on the Mississippi River and the success of her book about her voyage down the River.

There has been sooo much happening in Serendipity-Land!

AWARDS…

Since the last Newsletter, when I shared the news that Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River was honored with an award in the ‘Book of the Year’ competition sponsored by Foreword Reviews, the book has actually won two more awards!

First, Roadtrip . . . is the winner of the GOLD MEDAL in the Travel Category of READERS’ FAVORITE INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD CONTEST! This prestigious international competition receives thousands of entries and is recognized throughout the book world. Copies of ‘Roadtrip . . .’ will soon be graced with a lovely gold embossed sticker.

There will be a formal Awards Ceremony in Miami in November, in conjunction with the Miami Book Fair International, which brings hundreds of thousands of readers, authors, publishers and booksellers. I am thrilled and hoping to attend. (Stay tuned for photos of the event!)

The winners will soon be announced throughout the book world, including through Publishers’ Weekly! For now, a Book Review has been posted by Reader’s Favorite Reviewer, Jack Magnus, who gave it 5 Stars and had some wonderful comments. Here’s an excerpt . . .

Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River is an exceptionally good travel book that reads as smoothly as fiction and is filled with history, nature and the warmth and kindness of strangers soon to become friends. It’s a splendid read, and it’s most highly recommended.

View from the deck of the riverboat American Queen

AND, the book has also won The Clarion Award from the National Association for Women in Communications! I’ll be going to Kansas City in October for that Awards Ceremony in conjunction with the AWC National Convention! (Photos coming of that too!)

Our little raindrop is having one incredible year! I’m humbled, honored and amazed!

“My dreams about two of my American Idols, Elvis Presley and Elizabeth Taylor, are second only to my dreams about my wife Mari—for which I am extremely grateful—for the sake of my fifty-two-year marriage and what remains of my failing health!”—Jimmy Peacock

A photo of Elizabeth Taylor, my female American Icon, ironically picked out for me by Mari!

This post is unusually long because it makes up for the three posts I was not able to compose and publish since my last post on July 14!

Even so, I was able to use only about half of the items that have been shared with me by others during this period.

The omitted items (which include subjects such as more about cotton and its production and influence worldwide, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, paw paws, etc.) will have to wait for a possible future update and tidbit post (or posts).

The Lakeport Plantation reports on the Civil War and slavery in Southeast Arkansas and the history of Chicot County, Arkansas, were sent by email from Lakeport assistant director Blake Wintory who can be reached at lakeport.ar@gmail.com.

The copy and the two photos of the “Arkansas, Relocation” film title and the buildings at the WWII Rohwer Japanese-American Internment Camp were taken from the AETN invitation to a preview showing of a documentary film on this subject by Vivienne Schiffer and were used with permission.

The report on Gayle Harper’s book about her voyages on the Mississippi River can be accessed at her Web site at: http://gayleharper.com/

The photo of Elizabeth Taylor was sent to me by Patsy McDermott Scavo from an unknown source.

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/fall-updates-and-tidbits/feed/3myokexilelitJohnny Cash boyhood homeThe Dyess Colony in the Northeast Arkansas DeltaAn abandoned sharecropper's shackA mechanical cotton picker in operationA close-up view of a sharecropper's shack in a cotton field in the Arkansas DeltaA photo of Steve Bender's column about brown cottonA photo of Mari's brown cottonJoe Dempsey's photo of an Arkansas Delta cotton field taken from the leveeBarbara Barnes' photo of a Southeast Arkansas Delta cotton fieldLakeport Plantation and its cotton fieldFrontal view of Lakeport Plantation with its historical markerTitleboard for Relocation, ArkansasBuildings at the Japanese-American incarceration camp at Rohwer, Arkansas, near McGeheeAmerican Queen riverboatCover of Roadtrip with a RaindropView from the deck of the riverboat American QueenA photo of American Icon Elizabeth Taylor picked out for me by Mari!Mid-Summer Post of Updates and Tidbitshttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/mid-summer-post-of-updates-and-tidbits-5/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/mid-summer-post-of-updates-and-tidbits-5/#commentsTue, 14 Jul 2015 14:12:53 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6329]]>“The mystic chords of memory . . .
all over this broad land, will yet swell . . .
by the better angels of our nature.”—Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address,
March 4, 1861

“But while we may leave Arkansas, Arkansas never leaves us.”—John McClendon, “The Fountains of Youth,”Arkansas Life, Digital Version, April 2015

In my last post titled “The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Part III: The Delta Blues Roots of 1950’s Rock and Roll” I noted that due to my declining health (especially my failing eyesight) I would not be able to produce a new blog post until the end of the summer.

I also noted that the new planned post would be Part IV in the series on the subject of 1950’s Rock and Roll music of my teenage years.

However, in the meantime despite my continuing health issues and diminished eyesight I decided to try to make up a mid-summer post of collected updates and tidbits on previous posts, several of which were sent to me by friends and relatives.

Following are seven of these items which I had thought would not require as much detail or illustration as normal full-post entries, though that assumption proved to be false.

They relate to: (1) the WWII Japanese internment camp museum in my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas; (2) Gayle Harper’s book about her voyage of discovery down the Mississippi River; (3) a presentation about absentee Delta plantation owners; (4) the story of a black man who returned to the Delta to restore the “big house” of the Arkansas plantation on which he was born and toiled; (5) a song by black Country-Western singer Charlie Pride about growing up near a “Mississippi Cotton-Pickin’ Delta Town”; 6) two memorable quotes about Home in the South and Southern Hospitality; and (7) the eternal natural beauty of Elizabeth Taylor who played Southern Belles in at least two of her many films.

(Note: To magnify the photos, click on each one individually.)

Update on WWII Japanese Internment Camps

“As stewards of our nation’s history, the National Park Service recognizes the importance of preserving these confinement sites. They are poignant reminders—today and for future generations—that we must be always vigilant in upholding civil liberties for all.”—National Park Director Jonathan B. Jarvis

In several of my previous posts I wrote about the WWII Japanese-American internment camps, especially the two in Southeast Arkansas (the only ones in the South), and particularly about the new museum dedicated to them in my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas.

Japanese-American museum in McGehee, Arkansas

Recently the McGehee Times reported the observance of the two-year anniversary of the dedication of that museum and provided records of its attendance during that time period. According to officials, the museum has had more than 5,100 visitors from forty-nine states and twenty-four foreign countries.

On June 17, 2015, the Times published an article titled “National Park Service announces grants to support Japanese American internment projects.” In that article it was noted that twenty grants totaling more than $2.8 million were being set aside “to help preserve and interpret World War II confinement sites of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens.”

Among the projects funded by the grants will be “the creation of an online archive that will include more than 1,300 digitally scanned documents and photographs related to the former Rohwer incarceration site in [Rohwer] Arkansas [near McGehee].”

Update on Book about Voyage
down the Mississippi River

“‘Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River’” by Gayle Harper is a Winner in Foreword Review’s ‘Book of the Year’ INDIEFABCompetition! Winners were announced last night onstage at the American LibraryAssociation’s Annual Conference in San Francisco and across social media—and ‘Roadtrip . . .’ took the Bronze Medal for the Travel category!”
—Gayle Harper writing about her book in June 27 email

Recently I received two email updates from Gayle Harper concerning her book about her voyage down the Mississippi River titled Roadtrip with a Raindrop. Following are some excerpts from one of those updates.

The 2015 Book Tour

I’ve just returned from another leg of the 2015 Book Tour for “Roadtrip with a Raindrop: 90 Days Along the Mississippi River.” This one was to the Delta, the land of heavy air, light hearts, sweet tea and hot tamales. This part of the adventure, sharing the Multimedia Presentation and the books is every bit as much fun as was the journey. Everywhere it is received with such exuberance that I am continually amazed. It makes people happy—and that is more than enough reason for me to do this!

Reunion

I stopped by the Highway 61 Blues Museum in Leland, Mississippi, and who walks in but my buddy Pat Thomas! I met him on Day 72 of the road trip and you can read his story on page 184 of “Roadtrip with a Raindrop.” He’s a Blues man and the son of a Blues legend, “Son” Thomas. I can’t say which one of us was happier to reconnect.

I was lucky enough to have a tour in Memphis and again in Natchez and I can hardly wait for this adventure! It is the world’s largest steamboat, with the capacity for 436 overnight passengers and every inch of it is elegantly beautiful. I’ll be on the trip from Dubuque to St. Paul and the return trip. Join me if you can!

American Queen riverboat

(c) Gayle Harper

For additional information on the book and how to order it, to see the photos and the BOOK TRAILER, and to learn more about the cruise on the American Queen, go to www.gayleharper.com.

Lakeport History Talk on
Absentee Plantation Owners

“Kenneth Rayner, a resident of North Carolina, purchased a 538 acre Chicot County plantation in 1845. Writing to a friend, he objected to the land being ‘in the state of Arkansas’ and complained ‘I will never leave my wife so long again.’ Two years later, visiting the plantation during the December harvest, he praised his overseer, ‘I think my overseer a first rate manager . . . he has picked, and packed about 220 bales of cotton’ despite bad weather.”—Caption under photo of Kenneth Rayner, a Chicot County, Arkansas, plantation owner, in Lakeport Plantation announcement on June 16, 2015

The above quote was taken from an online announcement of a history talk by Dr. Kelly Houston Jones, of Austin Peay State University, which was held on June 25 at Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village, Arkansas.

Lakeport Plantation with cotton fields

According to the Lakeport announcement:

Many masters along the Mississippi River did not reside on their plantations. Instead they relied on overseers to run the day-to-day operations. The absence of a white family in the ‘big house’ could make the plantation a much different place than one with an owner-resident. Dr. Kelly Jones will discuss her work on R.C. Ballard and other area plantation owners who resided away from their holdings, and what those arrangements would have meant for enslaved people living on those plantations.

In a related article in a recent issue of the McGehee Times, it was noted that “Ballard, a former slave trader, invested his profits in human trafficking into plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. By 1860 Ballard and his firm owned 500 slaves. His Wagram Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas included 915 acres and 80 enslaved laborers.”

To learn more about this subject and others relating to antebellum plantations in Arkansas and surrounding states, visit the Lakeport Plantation Web site at http://lakeport.astate.edu/ or send an email to the following address lakeport.ar@gmail.com.

“He [a black man] had returned home to the Arkansas Delta to purchase and restore a house that he was never allowed to enter as a child. . . . . He had traveled to every corner of the U.S., as well as 13 foreign countries, as a performer. But while we may leave Arkansas, Arkansas never leaves us.”—John McClendon, “The Fountains of Youth,”Arkansas Life, Digital Version, April 2015

In an online version of an article titled “The Fountain of Youth” which appeared in the April issue of Arkansas Life, John McClendon presented an extremely well-written account of a black man named Charles Graham who not only dreamed of returning to the Arkansas Delta plantation on which he was born and where he toiled in the cotton fields as a child, but of restoring its Southern-style “big house” to its former glory and for a new purpose.

Baxter Plantation “big house” located on Bayou Bartholomew, southeast of my birthplace of Selma, Arkansas, and west of my wife’s birthplace of Dermott, Arkansas (photo by Sara Blancett Reeves)

As McClendon noted:

In a baritone both calm and convincing, Graham delivers the script-worthy story of his life with diction so perfect and accent-free that it belies any hint of his rural Arkansas upbringing. But with his powerful gospel voice describing cotton stalks rising from sandy loam and days afield in 100-degree heat, it’s immediately clear that his is a setting purely Southern. As he reflects on his youth, a stream of continuous memories fills the room—verse after verse about life in the late ’50s and ’60s as a poor black child in the Arkansas Delta.

Then McClendon went on to describe the arduous task Graham set for himself in restoring the “big house” with the help of friends and others who shared his vision for that restoration and renewal of purpose:

The desire to see the old place brought back to life became a combined cause for those who remembered what it once was, as well as those who believed in Graham’s vision for the house’s future.

To read the entire story of Graham’s life and mission, both personal and religious, click on the title “The Fountains of Youth” or click on the actual URL in the Sources section of this post.

A Different Black Man’s View of the Delta

“Down in the Delta where I was born
All we raised was cotton, potatoes and corn
I’ve picked cotton till my fingers hurt
Draggin’ the sack through that Delta dirt. . . . .

“In a Mississippi cotton pickin’ Delta town
One dusty street to walk up and down
Nothin’ much to see but a starvin’ hound
In a Mississippi cotton pickin’ Delta town.”
—Lyrics to Charley Pride song titled
“Mississippi Cotton Pickin’ Delta Town”
written by Harold Dorman and George Gann

A few months ago my 1956 McGehee High School classmate and friend Pat Scavo, who has lived in and still loves both sides of the Mississippi River Delta, sent me a musical video of black Country-Western singer Charley Pride.

The link was to a You Tube video of Charley singing one of his classic hits about his birthplace where he spent his youth in “a Mississippi cotton-pickin’ Delta town.”

Charley Pride

Since you are likely already familiar with this song, I am sure you will have no difficulty in detecting the obvious difference in perspectives of Charley Pride and Charles Graham, another black man who returned to his birthplace in the Delta as described in the preceding section.

To view and hear Charley Pride’s musical memory of the Delta from his childhood days, click here or click on the actual URL in the Sources section at the end of this post.

Quotes on Home and
Hospitality in the South

“When I am overcome with homesickness, I refer to it as being ‘all down in the South’ or suffering from ‘y’all withdrawal.’ The only answer is to ‘take a pilgrimage to the Holy Land’—or at least find some ‘sweet young Southern thang’ to ‘tawk Dixie to me.’”—Jimmy Peacock

A Southern Belle in front of an antebellum home in Historic Helena, Arkansas

Sometime in the recent past, my longtime friend and 1956 Delta high school classmate Pat Scavo (who grew up in both McGehee, Arkansas, and Benoit, Mississippi, across the River) sent me the following quotes about Home in the South and the definition of Southern Hospitality. I thought I would insert them here since they both seem to fit right in with the other subjects in this post of updates and tidbits. Their original versions set as pieces of art can be accessed and purchased through their Web sites in the Sources section at the end of this post.

At Home in the South

“Sometimes we need to go where we can hear a screen door slam,
echoes of our parents calling our name,
wish on a falling star & catch fireflies in a jar.”—Connie Sue, Heavenly Place

As a tenth-generation Southerner and a professional copywriter, the only change I would have suggested to this Southern saying would be to reword the last phrase to “catch lightnin’ bugs in a fruit jar (or Mason jar).”

Southern Hospitality

“Not a tangible thing, but an attitude which has been ingrained in Southerners forever.
It’s a feeling of being sincerely welcomed as a guest or a long-lost friend; a way of life that lets people be as warm as the climate.
It’s an easiness in speaking with total strangers or anyone, a unique friendliness encompassing the whole way of life in the Deep South.
It’s not something one does, it’s the way one is.”
—Dee Johnson, Southern Hospitality

Of course, since I was born and raised in Southeast Arkansas and have lived for a short time in South Carolina and spent the second half of my life (thirty-eight years) in Northeast Oklahoma, I wholeheartedly agree with both of these observations about Home in the South and Southern Hospitality.

Update Quotes on Elizabeth Taylor

“All women need makeup. Don’t let anybody tell you different.
The only woman who was pretty enough to go without makeup
was Elizabeth Taylor,
and she wore a ton of it.”—Violet, matriarch of the Weston family, to Ivy,
her plain middle-aged daughter,
in play “August: Osage County” set in northeast Oklahoma

Elizabeth Taylor as icon of feminine beauty with or without makeup

The above quote by Benjamin Hardy appeared in “Bleak House in ‘Osage County,’” a theatrical review published in the Arkansas Times on June 11, 2015.

The play, written by native Oklahoman Tracey Letts, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was later made into a feature movie. The 2013 film version starred Meryl Streep as Violet Weston, who delivered this line about Elizabeth Taylor and her eternal beauty. (To read a Wikipedia article about this play, click here. To read a Wikipedia article about the film version, click here. Or click on the actual URLs in the Sources section at the end of this post.)

The reason I inserted this observation about feminine beauty from that play is twofold: (1) because the opening quote above relates to one of my favorite all-time screen stars, the late icon of beauty Elizabeth Taylor, and because it is voiced by one of my favorite current screen stars, the incomparable and seemingly imperishable Meryl Streep, and (2) because Elizabeth Taylor starred as a Southern Belle in at least two of my favorite Hollywood films: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Raintree County.

Elizabeth Taylor as a Southern Belle in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Elizabeth Taylor as a Southern Belle in the movie Raintree County

To illustrate and confirm the truth of this statement about Elizabeth Taylor not needing to wear makeup to enhance her inherent beauty, here are two photos of her (with and without makeup) sent to me recently by Pat Scavo. The two are only examples of several such photos of my “American Idol” that Patsy Mc has forwarded to me in the past and continues to do so. As such, they add to the eight I have taped around my computer in my office and the seven I have taped in and around my shaving mirror in my half-bath.

Elizabeth Taylor with makeup for her role as Cleopatra in the Hollywood movie by that name

Elizabeth Taylor without makeup

Thank you, Patsy Mc, for continuing to support me in my adoration and worship of the Lovely Liz whose fabulous beauty will never fade as long as Jimmy Peacock draws breath!

The quotes about the Japanese American internment sites were taken from an article titled “National Park Service announces grants to support Japanese American internment projects” which appeared in the McGehee Times on June 17, 2015.

The information and photos about Gayle Harper and her book about her voyage down the Mississippi River were taken from her Web site at:www.gayleharper.com

The quotes about absentee plantation owners and slaveholders were taken from an email announcement of a talk on the history of the subject by Dr. Kelly Houston Jones, of Austin Peay State University, held on June 25 at Lakeport Plantation near Lake Village, Arkansas. The quotes and the photo of Lakeport Plantation were used by permission. The final quote on the subject was taken from an article titled “Dr. Kelly Houston Jones to speak at Lakeport Plantation” which appeared in a recent issue of the McGehee Times.

Some of my previous posts about Arkansas Delta Plantations scattered throughout this blog can be accessed at:

The quotes and the photo of the Baxter Plantation house near Dermott, Arkansas, were taken from an article titled “The Fountains of Youth,” written by John McClendon with photos by Sara Blancett Reeves, which appeared in the Arkansas Life, Digital Version, April 2015 issue, accessed at:http://arkansaslife.com/the-fountains-of-youth/

The photo of the Southern Belle standing in front of an ante-bellum home in the historic Mississippi River port of Helena, Arkansas, was taken from a postcard published by the Helena Advertising and Tourist Promotion Commission, 622 Pecan, P.O. Box 495, Helena, Arkansas 72342, 501-338-6583

The quote about Elizabeth Taylor from the play “August: Osage County” was taken from a theatrical review by Benjamin Hardy titled “Bleak house in ‘Osage County’” which appeared in the Arkansas Times on June 11, 2015. It was sent to me by Pat Scavo.

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/mid-summer-post-of-updates-and-tidbits-5/feed/4myokexilelitJapanese-American museum in McGehee, ArkansasPrintGayle Harper and Delta Blues manAmerican Queen river boatLakeport Plantation with cotton fields"Big house" at the Baxter PlantationCharley PrideAn Arkansas Delta Belle in front of an antebellum home in Helena, ArkansasElizabeth Taylor as icon of feminine beautyElizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin RoofElizabeth Taylor as a Southern Belle in Raintree CountyElizabeth Taylor in makeup as CleopatraElizabeth Taylor without makeupSoundtrack of Our Lives, Part III: Delta Blues Roots of 1950’s Rock and Rollhttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-iii-delta-blues-roots-of-1950s-rock-and-roll/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/05/23/soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-iii-delta-blues-roots-of-1950s-rock-and-roll/#commentsSat, 23 May 2015 15:58:16 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6270]]>Introduction

“Rock and Roll may have turned gray, but its roots will always be black.”—Jimmy Peacock

“Well Nashville had country music
but Memphis had the soul
Lord, the white boy had the rhythm
and that started rock and roll
And I was here when it happened
don’t y’all think I ought to know . . .

I watched Memphis give birth
to Rock and Roll.”
—Carl Perkins, “Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll”
(To view a photo of the original
Sun Studio Million Dollar Quartetwith a video of this song by Carl Perkins, click here.)(To learn more about the Million Dollar Quartet,see the Addenda section at the end of this post.)

In my preceding post titled “The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Part II: Pop Music of the 1950s” I discussed some of the popular music that I heard and listened to during that decade of my youth.

In this post I had intended to discuss the 1950’s Rock and Roll music that dominated the second half of that decade. However, since it became so complex I realized that I had to limit this post to the Delta roots of Rock and Roll during the fifties.

Although the 1950s are often portrayed as an ideal, wholesome, stable, peaceful, and uneventful period, that rather romantic perspective is not entirely accurate. Besides my own personal life-changing experiences mentioned in my preceding post on Pop music of the 1950s, there were other life-changing social and historical events taking place during that decade.

Some of these include: the integration of blacks and whites in the U.S. Armed Services ordered by President Harry Truman in 1948; the Korean Conflict from 1950 to 1953 (humorously but not always realistically portrayed in the popular 1970’s TV series M*A*S*H); the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in American public schools; the ensuing Civil Rights Movement, especially the 1957 Central High School Integration Crisis in our capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, which captured headlines around the world for two years or more; the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, including the space race, with the Soviets launching the first satellite in orbit around the earth called Sputnik, and the United States detonating the first airborne hydrogen bomb; and many other such events of national and international significance and concern.

As indicated by the opening quote above from Carl Perkins, that decade is usually considered the beginning of the style of music which came to be known as “Rock and Roll.” Although some music critics will disagree with Perkins’ assertion that Memphis was the birthplace of Rock and Roll, it must be admitted that both Memphis music recorder and promoter Sam Phillips and his Sun Studio did have a powerful influence on the birth and early development of R&R. (To learn more about Sam Phillips and Sun Studio, see the links in the Sources section at the end of this post.)

This was especially true for the youngsters, like me, throughout the Mid-South who began to listen to that group of musicians and their style of music which was early called “Rockabilly,” in reference to its roots in black Blues, Rhythm and Blues, and Spirituals, and white Country-Western (“Hillbilly”), Gospel, and Pop music.

As indicated, it is those early Delta roots of Rock and Roll that I intend to address in this post. But the post is not really meant to be a factual history of the birth and development of Rock and Roll. That subject can be easily accessed online through Wikipedia articles such as “Rock and Roll” and “1950s in Music.” Rather, this post is supposed to be a general presentation of some of the early 1950’s Rock and Roll performers and songs that served as part of the “soundtrack” of my teenage years during my formative high school and college days.

My Personal Historyof the Roots of Rock and Roll Music

“One Mint Julep”— The Clovers. Late 1951. First of these [Black Rhythm and Blues songs] which I remember listening to on radio [in early 1950s]. Group produced hits in R&B field in early fifties (Bobby Vee and Bobby Vinton—white pop artists covered their material). One big hit left in 1959, ‘Love Potion Number 9’ which was still being performed by rock groups in 1970’s. Cross-over hit popular with whites also.”—Entry in my late 1970’s personal historyof the origin and development of Rock and Roll music.(To hear this early 1950’s song by the Clovers, click here.)
(To learn more about this song from Wikipedia, click here.)

The Clovers

Somewhere between 1977 and 1981, while I was working as a French translator and editorial assistant for an international Christian ministry in Tulsa, I was confronted with an interesting question about Roll and Roll music.

Since I was working with a group of men who were about fifteen years younger than I, one day they began to question and debate among themselves, “Who started Rock and Roll?”

As I listened, I could not believe the “answers” they were suggesting, such as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Seeger, etc. Finally, since like Carl Perkins, I was “there when Rock and Roll was born,” I could not help but interject my opinions into the conversation.

Surprisingly, either they did not understand me or they did not believe me. It seemed that I was talking about people and songs and music they had never heard of. So as a professional copyeditor, “The guardian of precision, the protector of the facts, a professional perfectionist dedicated to the idea that you can believe what you read (From Manuscript to Book),” after work I headed to the Tulsa library to research the subject and prove my point.

After hours and hours of research (which could have been done in a few minutes with today’s technology) I had gathered enough information to fill four or five single-spaced pages (typed on an old worn-out Underwood portable typewriter) and copied enough music to fill both sides of four cassette tapes (one of which is now missing). From that material, I made up a rather exhaustive history of the birth and early development of Rock and Roll as I knew it, experienced it, and recalled it.

Beginning with its primitive roots in Mississippi River Delta work chants, through early Delta Blues tunes often played on nothing more than a single wire on a broom handle attached to the post of a shotgun house, through true Delta Blues music played on a guitar and/or “French harp” (harmonica), and Rhythm and Blues with a larger band and more sophisticated musicians I listed dozens of examples of the movement and development of the Blues from the Delta to Memphis and then upriver to places like Chicago, and downriver to New Orleans.

I particularly traced that movement to Memphis and to Sam Phillips and Sun Records and the small group of black musicians whose music Phillips recorded in an effort to promote it to larger audiences since at the time white recording studios would not record black music, and white radio stations would not play it. From there I showed how Phillips and others began to record some black Delta Blues musicians like B.B. King, “Muddy” Waters, and “Howlin’ Wolf.” As Phillips once said: “When I heard Howlin’ Wolf, I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.’” He was obviously not alone in that opinion, especially among young white Deltans like me.

Sam Phillips in the 195os

Sun Studio in Memphis

But Phillips also began to seek out white performers (like Elvis Presley) who could “cover” black music for white audiences, a subject I will discuss in my next post. (One of those white performers for another recording label cited in my previous post on “Pop Music of the 1950s” was Pat Boone, a squeaky-clean, white-buck-shoe singer who “covered” several black musicians with hits like “I Almost Lost My Mind,” which I also offered in a video by Fats Domino.) Phillips also recorded white musicians like Carl Perkins who could write and perform their own versions of Rock and Roll songs such as “Blue Suede Shoes” (1955) and “Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (1986) quoted above.

As an example of the original black music later “covered” or copied by white performers, in my personal history of the origin of Rock and Roll I inserted an entry on Louis Jordan and his R&B band from the Arkansas Delta titled “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” recorded in 1946! This is what I wrote about that song:

“Choo Choo Ch’Boogie”—Louis Jordan, vocal and alto sax and band. Jan. 23, 1946 in New York. Louis Jordan was probably the most successful black recording artist of the forties. First big hit—million-seller (extremely rare for black acts in those years). Also recorded with Bing Crosby (1944), Ella Fitzgerald (1945), and Louis Armstrong (1950)—strong influence on Bill Haley, who later formed a white band playing black-copied music, one of innovators of R&R music to come.” (Italics mine.)

I also discussed two other early 1950’s songs that in hindsight can be considered part of the “roots of Rock and Roll.”

The first one was a Delta Blues song that was released in 1952 by Muddy Waters and titled “Hoochie Coochie Man” (later featured in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers). Here is my description of it in my personal history of the roots of Rock and Roll compiled in the late 1970s:

Next was one by Ruth Brown titled “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” which I described as following:

“Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”—Ruth Brown. Recorded 1953. Typical of black (Rhythm and Blues) [songs] which were listened to and popular with young whites (including me) who were ‘instigators’ of R&R by listening to and requesting such music on the radio, buying the records, dancing to the music and otherwise encouraging musicians and [music publishers] to promote R&R (though it was not yet so named—that came about 1954). Ruth Brown became about as popular in R&R as in R&B.”

To view a video of this rousing version of an “early Rock and Roll” song, click here. To learn more about Ruth Brown, click here.

Ruth Brown

Other Popular Examples of 1950’s
Roots of Rock and Roll

“Oh, life could be a dream (sh-boom)If I could take you up in paradise up above (sh-boom)If you would tell me I’m the only one that you loveLive could be a dream, sweetheart”—Lyrics to “Sh-boom”

Two other early 1950’s Rhythm and Blues or Doo-wop selections that had an influence on the birth and development of Rock and Roll and sometimes called “the first Rock and Roll record” were the following:

Jackie Brentson’s “Rocket 88” released in 1951, as noted in a Wikipedia article:

According to Wikipedia, the second recording sometimes inaccurately given credit as being “the first Rock and Roll record” was “Sh-boom” (“Life Could Be Dream”) which first appeared in 1954 and became known by every teenager of that period:

The song was first recorded on Atlantic Records‘ subsidiary label Cat Records by The Chords on March 15, 1954 and would be their only hit song. “Sh-Boom” reached #2 on the Billboard R&B charts and peaked at #9 on the pop charts. It is sometimes considered to be the first doo-wop or rock ‘n’ roll record to reach the top ten on the pop charts (as opposed to the R&B charts). This version was ranked #215 on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and is the group’s only song on the list. (Italics mine)

A more traditional version was made by The Crew-Cuts for Mercury Records and was #1 on the Billboard charts in for nine weeks during August and September 1954. The single first entered the charts on July 30, 1954 and stayed for 20 weeks. The Crew-Cuts performed the song on Ed Sullivan‘s Toast of the Town on December 12, 1954. On the Cash Box magazine best-selling record charts, where both versions were combined, the song reached #1.

“You Gotta Cut That Out”—Forrest City (Ark.) Joe, vocal and harmonica; unidentified guitar. ‘If we date the previous blues about 1900-1910, then fifty years and many thousand stanzas later, this is what the Delta blues had become.”
——Entry in my late 1970’s personal history
of the origin and development of Rock and Roll music.(To hear this later 1950’s song by Forrest City Joe, click here.)
(To learn more about Forrest City Joe and his harmonica playing, click here.)

Although I am not able to list all the entries in my personal history of the birth and development of Mississippi River Delta Blues, here is another example from the Arkansas Delta side of that interesting history, the town of Forrest City being not far from Helena, Arkansas, which had a great Blues radio show on KFFA called the King Biscuit Blues Hour.

Originally named for its sponsor King Biscuit Flour, that show, which has recently had to change its name, has become the longest-running Blues show in the United States and has featured many famous Blues artists, particularly Sonny Boy Williamson II. (To learn more about Helena and its Blues show and its Delta Cultural Center, click on the titles. To learn more about Sonny Boy Williamson II, click here.)

The Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas

Sonny Boy Williamson II

It was from such radio shows and stations as the one in Helena; from others in Memphis; from some across the River from our hometown in Greenville, Mississippi; and from late-night mega-watt giants such as Randy’s Record Shop on radio station WLAC in Gallitin, Tennessee, that we white teenagers in the Delta began to listen to black music in the early 1950s. This is what Wikipedia had to say under the title “The nighttime R&B years”:

“By the 1950s, however, WLAC would achieve a distinctive notoriety of its own, the nighttime station for half the nation. The station became legendary from a quartet of nighttime rhythm and blues shows . . . . Thanks to the station’s clear channel designation, the signal reached most of the Eastern and MidwesternUnited States, although African-American listeners in the Deep South were the intended audience of the programs. WLAC was particularly popular with some young whiteteenagers; some believe that the nightly shows laid the foundational audience for the rock and rollphenomenon of the late 1950s.” (Italics mine)

The Actual “Birth” of 1950’s Rock and Roll

“Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock ‘n’ roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of predominately African-American genres such as blues, boogie woogie, jump blues, jazz, and gospel music, together with Western swing and country music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s.”—Wikipedia article titled “Rock and Roll”

In my personal history of the roots of Rock and Roll, after discussing many other early 1950’s Blues, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll black musicians, I went on to discuss Bill Haley and the Comets who in the mid-fifties “covered” two black hits: “Rock Around the Clock” and “Shake, Rattle, and Roll.”

I also noted how a white Cleveland disk jockey named Alan Freed took the titles of those two massive hits to make up the name for this new type of music and called it “Rock and Roll.”

Bill Haley and His Comets

The rest . . . as they say . . . is history—and I recorded it in words and on tape for my sadly misinformed younger seekers of truth whom I later realized were not questioning the beginning of Rock and Roll music but of “Rock” music, which was and remains a different animal from a different era than mine, one with which I as a child of the 1950s had neither interest nor contact—and still don’t.

Conclusion to My Report onthe Roots of 1950’s Rock and Roll

“Shake, Rattle & Roll”—Joe Turner, vocal. Recorded Feb 15, 1954.This is it! R&R is born! ‘Covered’ by Bill Haley, himself a product of Louis Jordan and other black musicians, this piece, along with soon-to-follow ‘Rock around the Clock,’ produced not only a new craze in music (movies like “Blackboard Jungle” and the ‘Wild One” with Marlon Brando further popularized this type of music among the young—while making ‘heroes’ and ‘cool cats’ out of types such as Brando, James Dean, etc.) but also gave this new crazy music its title Rock (around the Clock) and Roll (Shake, Rattle and).”—My entry for “Shake, Rattle and Roll” by Joe Turner
(To hear Joe Turner’s original version of this song, click here.)

Joe Turner

My hard work back in the late 1970s in researching and compiling that history of the birth and development of early Rock and Roll music from the Mississippi River Delta Blues was not a total loss.

One of the authors whose books on the subject of the Delta Blues I consulted and quoted was Dr. William Ferris (see Sources section at the end of this post), whom I learned had recently helped to establish the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

When I wrote to Bill Ferris to query him about my research into Blues music as the foundation for Rock and Roll, we began a sixteen-year correspondence that lasted until he was chosen by then U.S. president Bill Clinton to come to Washington to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.

From that relationship between Bill Ferris and me I began to receive a free subscription to the Southern Register, the regular newsletter of the Center. I continue to receive that newsletter which I quickly devour, including the section on the Center’s Blues magazine titled Living Blues. (To learn more about Bill Ferris, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and the Living Blues magazine, click on the titles.)

That foundation for 1950’s Rock and Roll was certainly laid for most of us teens from the Delta beginning in the early fifties and carrying on through our high school years.

From that foundation and the popularity of the black music we were listening to, white recording studios began to publish white “covers” of black music, and white radio stations began to play white “covers” of many of the black songs. Eventually records of the black musicians themselves began to become commonplace, even nationwide.

Thus was born Rock and Roll.

And like Carl Perkins, I was there at its birth!

Addenda

The Passing of Delta Blues Legend B.B. King

This post is dedicated to the memory of Delta Blues legend B.B. King who died while I was composing it on May 14, 2015, the fifty-ninth anniversary of my graduation from high school in the Delta in 1956. King’s guitar was called Lucille after a women whom King claimed was the cause of a fight that resulted in a fire that burned down the juke joint in which he was playing in the tiny Delta community of Twist, Arkansas.

Our 1956 High School Graduation
and the Million Dollar Quartet

“Four legendary rockstars came together one night only, but audiences can experience it over and over again in Celebrity Attractions’ last show for the Broadway season. Million Dollar Quartet. The show chronicles a December of 1956 day when the ‘Father of Rock N Roll’ Sam Phillips brought together Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash for a jam session. The star-studded quartet became known as the Million Dollar Quartet. Tickets went on sale for the Tony Award Winning play May 1. The play will run May 26-31.”
—“Youthful Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins
and Jerry Lee Lewis are coming to Tulsa,”Sapulpa Daily Herald, May 13, 2015

May 13, 1015, Sapulpa Daily Herald article on the appearance of the Million Dollar Quartet tribute artists in Tulsa, Oklahoma (to magnify and read the caption, click on the photo)

Recently, on May 14, 2015, I sent my former high school classmate Pat Scavo of Hot Springs (still known to us as Patsy Mc) an email reminding her that it was on that day that we graduated from McGehee High School in 1956—fifty-nine years ago!

In that email, I included a clipping from the Sapulpa Daily Herald announcing an upcoming play in Tulsa about the Million Dollar Quartet, a group of young tribute artists who portray four 1950’s “Rockabilly” stars in a historic jam session arranged by Sam Phillips at his Sun Studio in Memphis on December 4, 1956—the year we graduated from high school.

For months Patsy Mc has been sending me updates on the Million Dollar Quartet and reviews of the performances by the group that she and others from our class have attended in places like Memphis, Tennessee, and Maumelle, Arkansas, near Little Rock.

On April 28 Patsy Mc sent me a link to a video of the Million Dollar Quartet performing live on David Letterman’s Late Show. To view this performance, click on the link below.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMR8B-Oc7wk

The video of Carl Perkins singing “Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll” with a photo of the Million-Dollar Quartet of Perkins, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis was taken from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWqPKLMFX48

“We’ll let the magic
Take us away
Back to the feelings
We shared when they played

In the still of the night Hold me darlin’, hold me tight, oh So real, so right Lost in the fifties tonight”
—Ronnie Milsap

As I noted in the past two posts, over time the music we listened to in our youth and young adulthood often becomes the “soundtrack of our lives”—especially as we grow older and begin to look backward to the simpler, happier days of our existence.

Often, these memory “flashbacks” are triggered by music, particularly by a certain song—and sometimes it is the reverse, a certain memory of a past event will trigger the music being played at the time that event took place.

And, so often, as the old song above says, we become “Lost in the Fifties,” or whatever decade it was in which we spent our happiest, most carefree days. (To listen to this song sung by Ronnie Milsap with its emphasis on returning mentally and emotionally to happier times, click here.)

In my previous post I examined the music that I heard and listened to during my childhood days of the 1940s in my rural birthplace of Selma, Arkansas.

Me about age nine just a year before we moved from Selma to McGehee

As noted, that simple, idyllic life came to an abrupt and totally unexpected end in 1948 when at age ten I was forced to move with my family to the nearest town of McGehee, Arkansas, about fifteen miles away.

There I entered an entirely new and different lifestyle and environment among a world of strangers. Other than my immediate family, I knew only one other person in the city of McGehee, and especially in the McGehee Elementary School: Jarrell Rial, the cousin of a Selma friend whom I had come to know when he came out to visit his Selma relatives every Sunday afternoon.

Me about the time we moved from Selma to McGehee

Besides my stressful experience in being uprooted against my will from my familiar and beloved childhood existence, there were other “coming of age” experiences in that decade, each of which had a profound effect on the direction of my life: For example, the death of my father in 1954; my graduation from high school in May 1956; my enrollment in Ouachita Baptist College in September 1956; my graduation from OBC in June 1960; and my enrollment in graduate school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in the autumn of that same year.

Me at graduation from McGehee High School in May 1956

There were also huge, sweeping, and often (to many, especially adults) disturbing changes in the music of that decade, which was actually supposed to be the subject of this post. I had intended to address the birth and development of Rock and Roll music in this decade, which marked my own development from a country-born and country-raised child, to a small-town adolescent and teenager, and then to a college and graduate school student and young adult.

However, I soon realized that the subject of all the different types of music of the 1950s was so complex and so involved that due to my failing health and other complications, I simply could not devote the time and energy necessary to present it as I would like.

So, instead I decided to break the subject of the soundtrack of my life during the 1950s into two parts, beginning with the still innocent, wholesome, and entertaining Pop music of that fertile decade. The origin, development, and changing nature and course of Rock and Roll music will have to wait for the next post, if I am able to compose it.

Meanwhile, here are just a few examples of some of my favorite Pop musicians and songs from that historic and ever-changing period in my youth.

List of Some of My FavoritePop Musicians and Songs of the 1950s

“‘Popular music, or ‘classic pop,’ dominated the charts
for the first half of the 1950s.
Vocal-driven classic pop replaced Big Band/Swingat the end of World War II,
although it often used orchestras to back the vocalists.”—“Music History of the United States in the 1950s”

To simplify matters, I chose to break down the pop music of the 1950s into categories of individual male singers, individual female singers, male groups, female groups, mixed groups, and instrumentalists.

Each of these categories includes examples of some of the most popular musicians and songs I heard or listened to in that decade. Obviously the list (which is primarily based on a Wikipedia article titled “Music History of the United States in the 1950s”) is not intended to be complete in regard to the musicians of that period or their hits. However, the ones listed are accompanied by the actual URLs. You can simply click on the ones that interest you most to hear and see them played on YouTube videos, often accompanied by nostalgic 1950’s scenes. Other musicians and other songs of that period may be located by referring to the Addenda and Sources sections at the end of the post or by simply Googling them by performer and song title.

Into these lists of sample musicians and selections, I have inserted a few notes on particular ones that always bring back personal memories related to them, what I called in my previous posts “Musical ‘Memory Triggers’ and ‘Time-Travel Transporters.’”

Note: An asterisk (*) indicates those pop singers who also sang Rock and Roll. As noted at the conclusion of the Wikipedia article on music and musicians of the 1950s: “Even Rock ‘n’ Roll icon Elvis Presley spent the rest of his career alternating between Pop and Rock (‘Love Me Tender,’ ‘Loving You,’ ‘I Love You Because’). Pop would resurface on the charts in the mid-1960s as ‘Adult Contemporary.’)”

But although many of the Elvis songs I heard during the 1950s were actually better classified as Pop, I left my discussion of Elvis and his music for the next post on Rock and Roll music of the 1950s. However, I did address this subject earlier in my post titled “My First Encounter with Elvis and His Music,” which was about an incident that occurred in the mid-1950s.

Elvis Presley in about 1955

Individual Male Singers

“With his blessings from above
Serve it generously with love
One man, one wife
One love through life

Memories are made of this
Memories are made of this”—1950’s tune sung by Dean Martin

During this period I worked at a McGehee dime store which sold 45-rpm records that were played all day long. Besides hearing this song by Pat Boone played every day for weeks, I also heard his hits “Love Letters in the Sand” and “I Almost Lost My Mind.” Every time I hear these songs, I think of that dime store from long ago. (To see a video of Fats Domino’s New Orleans Blues version of this song, click here.)

For some reason, every time I hear this immensely popular old tune, I remember our physical education class picking up trash under the bleachers at the high school football field. What the connection was between that song and that task I still don’t know. Maybe it was our way of “loading sixteen tons” of trash!

When I was a freshman at Ouachita Baptist College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, there was a popular young man from Malvern, Arkansas, who did a hilarious skit in the amateur talent shows. In that humorous skit he did a dead-on, dead-pan karaoke rendition of this song using a funny little kid’s cowboy hat and toy whip which he popped at just the right moments to match the pops in the song. Again, why I still recall that skit every time I hear that old song now almost sixty years later, I have no idea!

This is another one of the hugely popular songs that were played endlessly at the McGehee dime store where I worked in the mid-1950s. Two others by Dean Martin that were played over and over in the store were “Memories Are Made of This” (one of my favorite pop songs of the 1950s), and “Innamorata,” which I chose as my favorite song of 1956, the year I graduated from high school. As such, it was featured on the little 45-rpm-record table place marker at our senior banquet. Why, of all the many Rock and Roll songs—and especially all the Elvis Presley songs—that I heard in 1956 I should choose this love song by Dean Martin as my favorite, I have no idea, except as proof of my being (even then) a “hopeless romantic and a helpless neurotic.” All of these Dean Martin songs and many more bring back warm memories of my younger years, which is why I own and play CDs of them at home and in the car.

According to Wikipedia, this “Classic 1957 revival of the Fats Wallers 1935 original only reached #22 in the UK but was a US #3 hit and earned Billy a gold disc.” Every time I hear it sung (even by Elvis on CD) it takes me back to the summer of 1957 when a carload of us college kids between our freshman and sophomore years drove back and forth between McGehee and Monticello, Arkansas (about twenty-five miles each way) to attend summer school at what was then Arkansas A&M. One of those students turned out to be the sister of Cullen Gannaway from Arkansas City. Cullen, whom I had yet to meet, later became my best friend at Ouachita Baptist College and even the Best Man in my wedding in December 1962. So unknown to me then, this song would have a small part in my romance and eventual wedding six years later and thus also a part of the “soundtrack” of my courtship and early marriage to be listed in my future post on the music of the early 1960s. (See my earlier post titled “The Peacock Love Story and the Passing of a Friend.”)

Individual Female Singers

“I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see
Introduced her to my loved one and while they were dancing
My friend stole my sweetheart from me

I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz
Now I know just how much I have lostYes, I lost my little darling on the night they were playing The beautiful Tennessee Waltz”
—1950’s tune sung by Patti Page

Another of the many Pop songs played endlessly at the McGehee dime store where I worked in the mid-50s. I loved all of her entertaining songs delivered in her cute, pert, chipper manner and her unique squeaky little-girl voice.

For some reason every time I hear this old song played I immediately think of sitting in study hall in the auditorium of the McGehee High School in the mid-50s. What the connection between the song and that place is, I have no idea because that was decades before the time of portable music players, which would not have been allowed in study hall anyway.

This one (and indeed each of the songs by Julie London) always takes me back to my freshman year at Ouachita Baptist College in 1956-57 where one of the guys on our dorm floor played her album continuously. At the time, Julie London was a sultry-voiced sexual icon who was married to actor Jack Webb, who played L.A. detective Joe Friday on the now-classic TV show Dragnet.

Patti Page was a native of Claremore, Oklahoma, originally named Clara Ann Fowler, who took her professional name from a dairy that sponsored her local radio show. She had numerous hit songs during the 1950s and beyond. Every time I hear any of them (which is often since her cassette album is one I carry with me to the blood center I visit every two weeks), I think of two places in De Ridder, Louisiana: one, a typical 1950’s hamburger joint where her music was played constantly on the jukebox, and the other an old-fashioned drugstore, both of which Jarrell Rial, my Selma-McGehee buddy, and I visited often during our National Guard training every summer at Fort Polk. A former Marine who married Mari’s cousin used to take great delight in telling all the soldiers in our unit how he drove by that drugstore one night and saw Jarrell and me eating ice cream cones and reading comic books—while probably listening to Patti Page, the “Singin’ Rage”! A couple of young Southern Baptist “Swingers”!

This song always reminds me of a certain diner in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where three of my McGehee High School Band buddies and I used to eat breakfast while staying at the nearby Como Hotel (no longer standing) during our annual spring band festivals in the early 1950s. The popular song must have been playing there at least once when I first heard it, and it was permanently engraved on my “memory board.”

Male Groups

“Tho’ summer turns to winter
And the present disappears,The laughter we were glad to shareWill echo through the years.

Tho’ other nights and other daysMay find us gone our separate ways,We will have these moments to remember . . .”—“Moments to Remember” sung by the Four Lads,the class song of the Class of 1956,McGehee High School

I recall hearing this group sing this song and others when they came to Ouachita Baptist College to perform with Stan Kenton and his band in about 1959-60. Joe Dempsey, my longtime friend, Ouachita classmate, and the designer of this blog, recently sent me an email stating: “I well remember Stan Kenton coming to OBC. There’s an interesting tidbit to that visit. There was a 1954 graduate of El Dorado High School [Joe’s high school alma mater], Bob Knight who played trombone in that band. The Firehouse Five Plus Two also visited OBC a couple of times. Links to those guys [appear below]:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1l04Hn9s88 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x87IQhuQ-WY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIUU78VaQQU

When Mari and I were courting we became acquainted with this group on a weekly 1961 TV show called “Sing Along With Mitch.” It was somewhat unusual since it featured a beautiful and talented young black female lead singer named Leslie Uggams, which was somewhat controversial in those early days of black and white integration in the media.

Still one of our favorites of all the dozens of musical groups we heard during the 1950s. According to Wikipedia:

“[Les Paul] recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records. Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an ‘architect’ and a ‘key inductee’ along with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed. Les Paul is the only person to be included in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.” Although classified as Rock and Rock artists, Les Paul and Mary Ford were also considered Pop musicians.

When Andy Herren learned that I was making up a post on 1950’s Pop music, he sent me the following message about Les Paul and Mary Ford:

“If you can, check out Les Paul and Mary Ford’s ‘How High the Moon’ in 1951. We heard it on KVSA back when. If you listen to Les play with empathy, you realize how good he is. He invented what he called the ‘Pauleriser’ which let him play as a second guitar and then a third and fourth. I think Mary is singing with herself too. Hearing them takes me back to riding in a car with the windows down on a gravel road, and the gravel making the car jerk back and forth.”

One of the most popular mixed groups (there was one female singer with a quarter of male singers) in the 1950s who produced a long list of hits during that period. One of those hits was titled “Twilight Time.” This song (though perhaps not the Platters’ version) was the closing musical sign-off of our local daytime radio station, KVSA, located between McGehee and Dermott, Arkansas, so we heard it often. (See the entry about KVSA in the Addenda Section).

“On a picnic morning
Without a warning
I looked at you
And somehow I knew . . . .”

“It must have been moonglow
Way up in the blue
It must have been moonglow
That led me straight to you”—Lyrics to the songs “Picnic” and “Moonglow”from the popular 1955 movie Picnicstarring William Holden and Kim Novac

An entertaining version of the Percy Faith instrumental hit with photos of the covers of 1950’s magazines including views of celebrities of that time such as Pat Boone, Princess Grace Kelly, and sexpot movie star Jayne Mansfield.

An unforgettable scene of William Holden and Kim Novac dancing to the music of the film Picnic. I first saw this classic 1955 movie in Monticello. Arkansas, where my cousin Donald Peacock was the projectionist, and have loved it ever since. It always brings back a lot of memories, such as the quote from a computer-generated Clint Eastwood character in the kids’ movie Rango, “This isn’t heaven, kid. If it were we’d be eatin’ Pop-Tarts with Kim Novac.” Yeah.

I first heard this song played by the Harry James orchestra in 1957. Since my Monticello cousin Donald and I both played trumpet in our school bands, we tried to learn to play this tune together, even composing the sheet music for it which I still have in my old trumpet case. (To learn more about Donald, see my earlier post titled, “My Cousin Donald and His Early Years.”)

This song was later also recorded by Andy Williams, a pop singer whose music I heard often throughout the 1950s and beyond. To hear his version of this song with photos of him and beautiful scenes throughout Canada, click here.

Addenda

In the past, my McGehee High School Class of 1956 classmate Pat Scavo (known to us then as Patsy McDermott) has sent me links to free old-time music which is divided into decades and played radio-style in random order.

Here are two such links for music of the 1950s along with many other musical links to other decades, old radio and TV shows, etc.:

I hope you can access these sites and pick out the songs from the era you wish to listen to. I also hope they will “bring back [your] dream divine” so that you can also “live it over again.”

To view a brief nostalgic 1953 video about KVSA, the Voice of Southeast Arkansas, located between McGehee and Dermott, with a background of the type Pop music it played in the 1950s (now called “American Standard” music) go to:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKgm8XYU_fU

On April 27, 2015, my cousin Kay Barrett Bell sent me an alternate version of Ronnie Milsap’s “Lost in the Fifties Tonight” with great scenes of 1950’s people; stores and drive-ins; automobiles; dress; events and sports; games and toys; cigarettes and snacks; celebrities and political figures; products and old ads; movie/TV stars and comedians (like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, James Dean, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca); grade-B cowboys such as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, etc.); and more, all found at: http://safeshare.tv/w/FEDEwZHZXu

NOTE: This video begins with a brief vocal introduction, which may be racial in nature, followed by two images of 1950’s white high school students (probably at the time of the Integration Crisis at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas) demonstrating against the integration of black and white students in 1957. Viewer discretion is advised.

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/the-soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-ii-pop-music-of-the-1950s/feed/4myokexilelitMe about age nine just before we moved from Selma to McGeheeMe about the time we moved from Selma to McGeheeMe at graduation from McGehee High School in May 1956Elvis Presley in about 1955Pat BooneDean MartinJulie LondonPatti PageThe Four LadsThe HilltoppersStan KentonThe McGuire SistersLes Paul and Mary FordKVSAPoster of the 1955 film PicnicThe Soundtrack of Our Lives, Part I: My Childhood Yearshttps://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/the-soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-i-my-childhood-years/
https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/the-soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-i-my-childhood-years/#commentsFri, 17 Apr 2015 14:48:36 +0000http://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/?p=6181]]>Introduction

“The music of our youth becomes the soundtrack of our lives.”—Jimmy Peacock

“In a film, the music tells us how to feel
about what we are seeing.”
—Anonymous Film Critic

In my previous post titled “Infusion Inspiration: Memory Flood at the Center for Blood” I described how listening to old cassette tapes of Gospel music on an outdated portable Walkman cassette player helps me to pass the time while I receive blood at a city hospital blood center.

I used quotes, scriptures, Gospel song lyrics, and links to Gospel music videos to illustrate the inspiration and encouragement from the stirred memories I receive during those long tedious hours of sitting in a recliner in a cold room hooked up to an IV tube.

In this post, a sort of sequel to that one, I continue the subject of how songs of all types, and not just Gospel hymns, have the power to serve as “musical ‘memory-triggers’ and ‘time-travel transporters.’”

As I noted in that post and in the opening quotes above, over time the music we listened to in our youth and young adulthood often becomes the “soundtrack of our lives”—especially as we grow older and begin to look backward to the simpler, happier days of our existence.

Often, these memory “flashbacks” are triggered by music, particularly by a certain song—and sometimes it is the reverse, a certain memory of a past event will trigger the music being played at the time that event took place.

It happens to all of us, I suppose, but especially to us “seniors.” That’s why we often think on such occasions, “Ah, those were the days!”

Now in this post I will recall and review some of the songs that became at least a part of the soundtrack of my childhood. Since there are so many I can only present some examples that come to my mind when I recall that period of my life or some incident in it. Due to their number I will not try to provide the lyrics or the video links to all these songs. However, you can always find them by searching for any that interest you by Googling them online.

Childhood Soundtracks

“And precious things are [musical memories] to an exile,They take him to a [time and] place he cannot be.”—My paraphrase of the Irish folksong“The Isle of Innisfree”

“When a man says that he is seeking the scenes of his childhood,
what he is really seeking is his childhood.”—Anonymous

If you have read my preceding post “Infusion Inspiration: Memory Flood at the Center for Blood,” you will recognize this first partial and paraphrased quote from the Irish folk song “The Isle of Innisfree.”

As I noted in that post and in this one, certain songs from our childhood and youth have the power to “take us [back] to a time and place we cannot be.” I described this phenomenon in my previous post when I wrote about the power of the old hymns of the faith that we sang in the Selma Baptist Church of my childhood.

But that experience is not limited to old hymns and Gospel songs though I am reminded that every day as my country, cattle-dealing family sat down to “dinner” (Southern for “lunch”), we always listened to two radio shows: 1) the news of livestock and commodity prices on the market and 2) a fifteen-minute program of Southern Gospel music by the Stamps-Baxter Quartet. I can even still sing their theme song, “Give the World a Smile,” almost seventy years later though I have never seen the lyrics in print nor have I heard the music in decades. (To hear this song sung by J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet, the group who backed up Elvis Presley on many of his songs, click on the title.)

J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet with Elvis Presley (center) whom they backed up

From my idyllic, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn childhood in my birthplace of Selma, Arkansas (which I wrote about in my earlier post titled “The Way We Were”), there are several old secular songs that still recall to my memory those simpler, happier days in my life.

For example, the first song I ever remember singing, at about age four while strolling through the house strumming a cheap plastic toy guitar, was one I heard on our old battery radio (which I wrote about in that earlier post about “The Way We Were”). It was titled “You Are My Sunshine” and was written in 1939 (one year after my birth) by Jimmie Davis, later governor of Louisiana. In fact, it was sung and declared “written by another Southern governor” in the film Primary Colors based on the presidential primary candidacy of Bill Clinton, former governor of my native state of Arkansas. (To hear this song sung by Jimmie Davis, click on the title.)

Jimmie Davis and his record of “You Are My Sunshine,” the first song I ever remember singing

Speaking of “musical memory-triggers” and “time-travel transporters,” you can imagine the sensation I experience every time I hear that old song from my earliest childhood being sung or played some seventy years later. It quite literally “strums the strings of my heart” just as I strummed the strings of that plastic toy guitar in that simple farmhouse in which I was born long ago and far away.

Of course, during my childhood there were other “soundtrack” songs that still speak to me and recall those happier days. For example, in that earlier post about “The Way We Were” I told about getting electricity for the first time in 1947. I also told how we took our habitual trip into town (McGehee, about fifteen miles from Selma) on “Sairdy evenin’” to go to the “pitcher show” and watch a double feature which always included a grade B-Western with 1940’s cowboy stars.

Malco Theater in McGehee, Arkansas, at its gala opening in about 1954 when it replaced the older Ritz Theater where I saw many 1940’s films (to magnify, click on the photo)

Some of those movie cowboys were known for their music, especially Gene Autry, called from the beginning in the 1930s “the Singing Cowboy,” and Roy Rogers, who got his start in Hollywood as part of the Western singing group “The Sons of the Pioneers.” A few of the songs I recall by the Sons of the Pioneers were “Cool Water,”“Tumblin’ Tumbleweed” and “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” (To view these songs on You Tube, click on their titles.)

(To hear these songs on YouTube video, click on their titles. Note: The Gene Autry song takes about ten seconds to begin so wait for it to start. The theme song of Roy Rogers, whose album of greatest hits we own and listen to, includes his wife and costar Dale Evans, a photo of whom with Roy and his horse Trigger, graces the wall of Mari’s bedroom.)

Gene Autry, known from the 1930s as the “Singing Cowboy”

Roy Rogers and his co-star and later wife Dale Evans (to magnify, click on the photo)

The War Years of the 1940s

“Listen to the jingle the rumble and the roar
As she glides along the woodland through the hills and by the shore
Hear the mighty rush of the engine hear the lonesome hobos call
You’re traveling through the jungle on the Wabash Cannonball.”—Lyrics to Roy Acuff version of“The Wabash Cannonball”

In that post about “The Way We Were” I told how we used to listen to “The Grand Ole Opry” in those carefree childhood days. I mentioned in particular listening to the star of the Grand Ole Opry at that time, Roy Acuff, whose songs like “The Great Speckled Bird” and particularly “The Wabash Cannonball” were great hits and heard everywhere in the country in those day.

Roy Acuff, the Grand Ole Opry star who sang “The Wabash Cannonball”

In fact, Roy and his songs were so popular that during World War II attacking Japanese soldiers used to cry out at their American enemies: “To hell with FDR (U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt)!” and “To hell with Roy Acuff!” (To hear “The Wabash Cannonball” sung by Roy Acuff on YouTube video, click on the title above.)

Since the 1940s of my childhood were the years of World War II (1941-45 for Americans), some of the music in our family “soundtrack” included popular wartime songs such as “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me (Till I Come Marching Home),” and of course the patriotic blockbuster “God Bless America” sung by “The Songbird of the South,” a rousing, robust Virginia singer named Kate Smith.

Popular WWII singer Kate Smith (center) with the cast of her first radio show

My particular favorites of some later versions of those wartime songs were “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” the signature song of Kate Smith, sung by Mama Cass; “A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square” (also spelled “Berkeley Square”), written in 1939, the year after I was born, sung by Bobby Darin; and of course Glenn Miller’s Big-Band theme song “In the Mood.” (To hear these three songs, click on their titles.)

Other Swing music favorites included “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Some favorite vocalists of that period included Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, the Andrews Sisters, and Dinah Shore.

Glenn Miller, perhaps the most popular Big Band leader of the 1940s

My Parents’ 1940’s Soundtrack

“He rides in the sun
‘Til his day’s work is done
And he rounds up the cattle each fall
(yodeling)
Singing his cattle call.”—Lyrics of refrain of “Cattle Call” sung by Eddie Arnold

“After the ball is over,
After the break of morn –
After the dancers’ leaving;
After the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching,
If you could read them all;
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball.”
—“After the Ball Is Over,”
Written in 1890 and sung in the musicalShow Boat in 1936

Although my family and I heard many of the universally popular songs and singers from the Swing and Big Band Music era during and after World War II, as a livestock dealer and his working partner-wife, my parents still tended to listen to what would today be termed Country-Western music.

Naturally, some seventy years later, I still recall with fond memory their favorite singers and songs, especially when I hear them on rare occasions. As noted throughout this series of posts, those old largely forgotten and poorly regarded pieces of musical nostalgia take me back to those simple, carefree days of my country childhood.

Mama and Daddy in about 1927, the year they married on Christmas Day. Note Mama’s dress and cropped 1920’s haircut, once again a popular style today. (To magnify, click on the photo.)

For example, it was not surprising that as a cattleman Daddy’s favorite type of music was Western. He especially liked songs by Country-Western singers such as Eddie Arnold, whose “Cattle Call” is quoted above with a link to a video of him singing and yodeling that entire song. I still hear Daddy singing it as he too went about his daily chores of “rounding up [and dealing with] the cattle each [day].”

Eddie Arnold who sang the “Cattle Call,” Daddy’s favorite song

Daddy also liked the music of other Country-Western singers such as Hank Williams. Hank was influenced by other singers whom Daddy liked such as Roy Acuff (mentioned above) and Ernest Tubb (whose album of biggest hits I still own and listen to, bringing back many memories of Daddy and his love for that type of Western singers and songs).

Finally, although Mama liked and listened to Gospel songs and hymns as well as Country-Western music, she also liked ballads and sentimental songs from Broadway musicals and movies. One was “After the Ball Is Over” quoted above from the 1936 Hollywood movie version of the Broadway musical Show Boat, two years before my birth. In fact, I heard it so much as a child that I learned the lyrics to it without ever seeing them or trying to memorize them. (To hear this song sung by Irene Dunne in Show Boat, click on the title.)

Irene Dunne who sang “After the Ball Is Over”

Mama also particularly liked one that I have never heard before or since (except perhaps on one occasion that I cannot now recall.) It was called “(My Sweet Little) Alice Blue Gown” from the 1919 Broadway musical titled Irene. After more than seventy years, while composing this post I finally went on Wikipedia and discovered the source of this term “Alice Blue gown” and its significance:

The “Alice Blue Gown” my mother sang about so often (to magnify, click on the photo)

That explanation makes one of my Mama’s favorite songs even more meaningful and dear to my heart. (To hear this old-fashioned song that I heard Mama sing so often I also learned its lyrics by heart, click here.)

Conclusion:“Gone with the Wind”

“Rhett, Rhett… Rhett, if you go,
where shall I go? What shall I do?”—Scarlett O’Hara to Rhett Butler
at conclusion of Gone with the Wind

Finally, Mama was obviously impressed with seeing her first full-color Hollywood movie in about 1939, the year after I was born. It was the blockbuster movie version of the best-selling book by Margaret Mitchell titled Gone with the Wind.

Scene from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind (for maximum viewing effect, click on the photo)

Mama sometimes referred to scenes from that movie and enjoyed hearing the song “Tara’s Theme” which ran throughout it. (To view a video of this haunting melody, with dramatic scenes from the film, including two white peacocks and Scarlett in front of Tara, click on the title above. It is a perfect example of the music in a film telling us how to feel about what we are seeing.)

All of these songs and singers, and so many more, were a great influence on my childhood and thus on my entire life. For example, “Tara’s Theme” from GWTW always has a strong emotional appeal to me every time I hear it.

But the “soundtrack” of my young life began to change when my family moved from the country to town (from Selma to McGehee) in 1948 when I was ten years old. As a result, at the end of the 1940s my simple, idyllic boyhood country life began to disappear as it, like Scarlett O’Hara’s happy, familiar life at Tara, began to become a thing of the past . . . until eventually it too was totally “Gone with the Wind.”

In my next post, “The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Part II,” I will continue with some of the music from the 1950s, arguably the most musically influential period of my entire life.

Addenda:
Links to 1940s Music and Musical

In the past, my McGehee High School Class of 1956 classmate Pat Scavo (known to us then as Patsy McDermott) has sent me links to free old-time music which is divided into decades and played radio-style in random order.

Here are two such links for music of the 1940s along with many other musical links to other decades, old radio and TV shows, etc.:

Although the Hollywood musical Yankee Doodle Dandy was made during World War II (in 1942, the year that my Mari was born), I was too young to see it. However, decades later when I saw it on TV, it became one of my favorite movies, which I still watch often.

James Gagney as showman George M. Cohan singing and dancing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in the musical by that name

]]>https://myokexilelit.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/the-soundtrack-of-our-lives-part-i-my-childhood-years/feed/5myokexilelitJ.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet with Elvis PresleyJimmie Davis and his record of "You Are My Sunshine"Malco Theater in McGehee, Arkansas, at its gala opening in about 1954The Sons of the Pioneers with Roy RogersGene AutryRoy Rogers and his co-star and wife Dale EvansGrand Ole Opry star Roy AcuffPopular WWII singer Kate Smith with the cast of her first radio showGlenn MillerMama and Daddy in about 1927, the year they married on Christmas DayEddie Arnold who sang the "Cattle Call"Ernest Tubb who sang "I'm Walkin' the Floor Over You"Hank Williams who sang "Your Cheatin' Heart"Irene Dunne who sang "After the Ball Is Over"The "Alice Blue Gown" my mother sang about so oftenScene from the 1939 film "Gone with the Wind"James Gagney playing showman George M. Cohan singing and dancing "I"m a Yankee Doodle Dandy" from the 1942 musical by that name